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THE BUSINESS OF WAR 



BY THE SAME AUTHOR 



THE WAR AFTER THE WAR 
THE REBIRTH OF RUSSIA 



THE BODLEY HEAD 




Pliolo raudvt 






THE BUSINESS OF 
WAR 



BY 

ISAAC F. MARCOSSON 



LONDON JOHN LANE THE BODLEY HEAD 
NEW YORK JOHN LANE COMPANY MCMXVIII 



Ji/^Z 



6^-^ 






PRINTED BV MORRISON AND GIBB UMITED, EDINBURGH 



TO 
THE BRITISH ARMIES EVERYWHERE 

BUT TO THOSE HEROIC LEGIONS IN FRANCE IN PARTICULAR 
THE AUTHOR DEDICATES 

THIS BOOK 

IN UNFORGETTABLE REMEMBRANCE OF THEIR 
COURAGE AND COMRADESHIP 



FOREWORD 

IN the glamour of battle heroism the world loses 
sight of the mechanics of war. It is more 
thrilling to have an emotion about a forlorn 
trench hope led to victory than to hear about 
a supply column that reached the front under a 
storm of shells. Yet the courage of the teamsters 
who face death with only the reins in their hands 
is fit to rank with the valour of the fighting men 
armed with guns. 

War has become a business. It is the world's 
supreme task at this moment. " Business as usual " 
has gone into the scrap heap along with many other 
illusions that clogged effort and begot a costly 
optimism in the early days of the conflict. The one 
definite work of civilization is to win the war. The 
path to victory is through organization. 

No military establishment presents such a picture 
of close-knit endeavour as the British Army. The 
immortal First Seven Divisions who dashed to the 
relief of Belgium and laid the first Anglo-Saxon 
sacrifice on the Altar of Freedom were the nucleus 
of the mighty host on which the sun never sets 



viii FOREWORD 

to-day. In less than three years Britain has created 
an institution out of cheerful service which has blocked 
the German machine that was forty years in brutal 
building. It is the precedent for our own gallant 
legions now in the making. 

No phase of the British Army is more complete 
in its system than Supply and Transport. By the 
natural circumstance which always subordinates the 
prosaic to the spectacular it is the least known. Its 
heroes are unsung ; its deeds are not often rewarded. 
Yet the Army Service Corps is the uncomplaining 
beast of burden that carries on its back the where- 
withal to live and fight. Its Victoria Cross is the 
consciousness of high and incessant devotion. 

In former experiences with the British Armies in 
France I have Seen the Supply and Transport only 
as a necessary incident in the life and death struggle 
that raged from the Channel to the Somme. Lately, 
however, I made a special journey to study it at first 
hand. I have talked with its organizers and its 
doers ; I have followed the food and equipment from 
the time it was contracted for until they reached the 
men in the firing line. 

In my work I have been one of the historians of 
so-called Big Business ; in this war I have been with 
the five seasoned Allied Armies and also with the 
American Expeditionary Force in France. It is no 
depreciation of any of them to say that the British 
organization for the supply of its fighting men is 
in many respects the most amazing business institution 
that I have yet seen. 



FOREWORD ix 

Britain's way has been the scientific way. She has 
made the business of war the prelude to an orderly, 
efficient and constructive peace. The War has become 
an immense training school for The War After the 
War. 

I. F. M. 

London, June 1918. 



CONTENTS 



I, War and Business 
II. Army Demand and Supply . 

III. Feeding the Fighting Millions 

IV, From Ship to Trench 
V. The Miracle of Transport 

VI. The Motor under Fire 
VII. The Salvage of Battle 
VIII. The Army Food Drive 

IX. The Wares of War . 
X. A Visit to Sir Douglas Haig 

XI. England's War Efficiency Engineer 





. 


1 
22 






39 






55 






78 






99 






112 






136 




. 148 


. 


. 158 


neer 




. 180 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 



Lieut.-General Sir John Cowans, K.C.B. 
Andrew Weir. 

Major-General a. R, Crofton Atkins 
Brigadier-General E. E, Carter, C.B. 
Major-General W, G. B. Boyce . 
Field-Marshal Sir Douglas Haig 
Sir Eric Geddes 



Frontispiece 


^ 


FACING PAGE 




%^ 


12 


1/ 


. 42 


Kf' 


. 82 


V 


. 158 


y 


. 180 


J/ 



THE BUSINESS OF WAR 



THE BUSINESS OF WAR 



WAR AND BUSINESS 

ABROAD-SHOULDERED, deep-chested man, 
with keen blue eyes and an unyielding 
jaw, the breast of his khaki tunic ablaze 
with service and order ribbons, sits at a flat- 
topped desk in the War Office in London with his 
finger on the pulse of the most remarkable business 
machine in the world. Before him each morning is 
laid a sheet of paper less than a foot square, on which 
is typed the feeding-strength of all the British Armies 
—man and beast— in every theatre of war, together 
with the precise quantity of food, fuel and forage 
available for them. On another sheet is a compact 
summary of all supphes contracted for or speeding on 
ships and trains towards the zones of distribution and 
consumption. At a glance, therefore, he can appraise 
the situation on which victory in the field stands or 
faUs. 

Although aloof from combat, this man controls the 
arteries through which pulses the very life-blood of 
war, for he is Lieutenant-General Sir John Cowans, 
K.C.B., Quartermaster-General to all His Britannic 
Majesty's Forces. He feeds, clothes and supplies a 
khakied host equal to the population of Greater New 
York; under his command are enough horses and 
I mules to operate all the farms in Iowa. He renews 



2 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

and keeps going a fleet of mechanical transport that 
would duplicate more than one-sixth of all the com- 
mercial motor vehicles in use in the United States. 
In a word, he is Managing Director of one vast branch 
of the stupendous Business of War. 

There are dozens of British Generals better known 
to the average man in England than General Cowans, 
but none, not even Field-Marshal Sir Douglas Haig 
himself, has a more important task. Without the 
" Q.M.G." — as the Quartermaster-General is com- 
monly known— there would be no big offensives in 
Flanders, Egypt or Mesopotamia ; indeed, no advance 
anywhere along the bristling British battle line that 
stretches from the English Channel to the shores of the 
Mediterranean.'pHis work is the work preservative of 
war. About it is no glamour of spectacular perform- 
ance ; ![ no thrill of battle heroism. It unfolds no 
panorama of grim and glorious deed. But it furnishes 
the real fuel of war ; it stokes the mighty human 
furnace that forges the Hammer of the Hun. 

Unsung and often unrewarded by the honours that 
go to troops of the line, the Army Service Corps, which 
mans the legions of Supply and Transport, can fight 
as well as feed. It takes a higher courage to drive a 
motor-truck where shells are falling than to operate a 
machine-gun under fire. The record of the Army 
behind the Army is a continuous narrative of unflinch- 
ing bravery shot through with a valour that is full 
brother to the efficiency of the Corps. A squadron of 
motor-trucks laden with food charged and routed a troop 
of German Uhlans in the retreat from Mons ; at the 
first battle of Ypres, cooks, orderlies, farriers, chauffeurs, 
and even battalion clerks swelled the long thin line of 
heroes that checked the Kaiser's march to the sea. 
i^lThere has never been a day since the immortal First 
Seven Divisions dashed to the relief of Belgium that 
Thomas Atkins has missed a day's rations. He has 
had them served hot and plentiful amid all the stress 
and storm of flying death. Day and night, up and 



WAR AND BUSINESS 3 

down the hell-swept roads, and regardless of the terrors 
that lurked in land and sky, the food has always come 
up. No matter how the tides of battle ebb or flow, 
man and beast must be fed. Break the lines of food 
communication and all is lost. 

But this immense operation is not without a ro- 
mance all its own. The endless chain of army supply, 
geared as it is to the most incessant and unfailing of 
all demands — the appetite — has annexed the whole 
world of output. It reaches to the waving wheat 
domain of the Argentine, to the fleecy cotton belt of 
our own South, to the rolling oat realm of Canada, to 
the dripping oil-fields of Burma, Mexico and Cali- 
fornia. Into its hungry channels flow the products of 
the vats and tanks of Chicago's Packingtown ; the 
benches and mills of New England ; the canneries of 
Australia. All lands and all flocks are stripped for its 
needs. It has recruited a host of workers as huge as 
the battling armies it sustains, to the insatiate end 
that the Wheels of War be kept whirling. 

While it involves millions of men, requires an ex- 
penditure of billions of dollars, taps the entire universe 
and provides a continuous procession of supplies, it is 
dominated by one man who can sit at a desk in a far- 
away oflice, the absolute centralization of the whole 
ramified activity. How is it possible when the seven 
seas have become the graveyards of transport ; when 
human life is as a candle in the wind ; when half of 
mankind is bent upon destruction ? 

The answer is easy. It all results from the fact that 
the Business of War as represented by the Supply and 
Transport of the British Armies is nothing more or 
less than a colossal piece of merchandizing that has 
become a triumph of standardization. What scientific 
efficiency experts have preached to American factory 
owners for application to the arts and crafts of peaceful 
pursuit has here reached the last degree of practical in- 
terpretation for the maintenance of the War of Wars. 
It expresses the genius of organization of a hundred 



4 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

United States Steel Corporations, Standard Oil Com- 
panies and International Harvester Companies rolled 
into one. It is a super-corporation, knit by iron dis- 
cipline, fed by fire and driven by an energy that would 
kindle and keep an Empire. Apply it to a purely 
commercial enterprise and it would yield a well-nigh 
fabulous profit. 

Yet the men who operate it are in the main soldiers 
who grub at prosaic desks, battling each day with 
questions of raw materials, overhead costs, produc- 
tion, transportation and distribution. Although un- 
limited financial credit is behind them, they must 
account for every dollar they spend. In providing 
for the battlefields of war they parallel nearly every 
problem of the battlefields of business. War, as 
waged to-day, is merely bitter and bloody competition 
between nations. In the operations of an army 
in the field you have, for example, the working out, 
with men and guns, of the most difiicult and costly 
of all industrial items — Distribution. So, too, with 
Supply and Transport, which is just another kind 
of Distribution made possible by invoking every 
rule of the business game. 

Study the system and you will find the whole 
armament of scientific trade warfare. You will 
encounter charts and diagrams of office and staff 
organization that will apply to any money-making 
establishment regardless of output. In the " follow- 
up " of army supplies you wiU see that every tin of 
jam is traced to the ultimate fighting consumer. 
You wiU discover processes of economy that " turn 
over " John Bull's taxes half a dozen times although 
originally intended for a single outlay. You will 
meet with battle salvage that redeems the debris of 
war, ranging from the nails in a timber trench support 
to a twelve-inch gun. Under this drive for war 
commodities new industries have been created and 
old ones revived. A gigantic mechanism has been 
set in motion that, while dedicated to war, is paving 



WAR AND BUSINESS 5 

the way for a more efficient, a more orderly and a 
more economical peace. 

Victor}^ in the war may or may not lie in the kitchen, 
but no one can deny that it is very likely to perch 
on the banners of the best-fed armies. From Darius 
to Napoleon the empty stomach has been first aid to 
defeat, " Many can lead troops ; I can feed them," 
was one of Wellington's proudest boasts. 

It was a hard job to feed soldiers when they were 
numbered b}^ tens of thousands ; it is infinitely more 
difficult now that they are reckoned in units of millions. 
There was a time when invading armies lived on the 
lands they occupied. Fancy the fate of Haig's hosts 
if they tried to subsist upon Flanders and Northern 
France ! But War, like Life, is a constant evolution. 
Hence the transition from plunder to preparedness ; 
from the" era of grafting sutler and unscrupulous 
army contractor to the present-day procedure that 
has made a perfect art of the commissariat. 

Clearly to understand the system of Supply and 
Transport (" S. and T." as they call it in the army), 
you must first get the active army organization fixed 
in your mind. There are two grand divisions. One 
is Operations, which has solely to do with strategy 
and fighting. It is controlled by the Imperial Staff, 
whose Chief is General Sir William Robertson. Its 
tools are men and guns. 

The other is Administration, which is charged 
with the task of keeping these men, their guns and 
their transport fed, fueled and equipped. At the 
head is the Quartermaster-General. He not only 
provides that the men and horses eat, but purveys 
the whole mechanical transport. He likewise fur- 
nishes all the wood, coal, disinfectants and medical 
comforts needed by the armies. 

There are two kinds of supplies : essential articles, 
like tinned and preserved meat, bread, biscuits, flour, 
jam, tea, sugar, butter, bacon and condensed milk; 
and non-essentials, like Jfresh meat and vegetables. 



6 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

The number of supply items for the British Army 
has grown to an almost incredible extent. In the 
Crimean War onlv three articles— flour, meat and 
vegetables— were issued to the troops. In the Boer 
War there was an increase to forty-five. To-day 
the Quartermaster-General has exactly four hundred 
and fifty on his list ! 

If the Quartermaster-General's work was confined 
to subsistence and fuel for man, beast and vehicle 
his labours would be comparatively easy. But linked 
with his task is the sponsorship of what is termed 
Ordnance and Equipment Stores. To the ordmary 
men the word Ordnance simply means goods of all 
kinds. As a matter of fact, in the British Army the 
phrase Ordnance Stores covers nearly eight thousaiid 
items, ranging from an axe to a mess tent that will 
shelter a circus. The principal stores, however, are 
camp equipment, clothing, shoes, underwear, blankets, 
shirts, harness, saddlery, trench tools, oils, pamts, 
chemicals, ironmongery, furniture of all kinds, huts 
and the materials for the repair of all these articles . 

Still a third detail of Administration deals with 
the question of Remounts, which means the renewal 
of horses. Both Ordnance Stores and Remounts 
have their own Directors, who work in conjunction 
with the Quartermaster-General. The only important 
equipment used by armies not supplied by the Quarter- 
master-General is arms of all description, guns and 
gun carriages, vehicles, telegraph and^ telephone 
stores and ammunition, which are all provided by the 
Master-General of Ordnance, whose chief source of 
supply is the Ministry of Munitions. 

The big difference between food supplies and 
ordnance stores is that one can wait and the other 
cannot. Guns, for instance, do not have to be fed 
regularly, but soldiers and horses cannot go a day 
without sustenance. Hence the Supply machine can 
brook no delays or breakdown. Interruption spells 
disaster. 



WAR AND BUSINESS 7 

Here, then, is the situation. Roughly speaking, 
five millions of British soldiers are training at home, or 
fighting, or being held in reserve in France, Meso- 
potamia, Egypt, Salonika or Africa. They must 
have three meals and their tea every day ; their 
clothes, boots, underwear and equipment must be 
kept in good order and renewed at regular intervals ; 
their horses, mules and motor-cars must also have 
the wherewithal to live or to be used. In short, the 
British Army must be maintained as a going and 
effective concern. 

Some of these troops are five thousand miles from 
the original source of their supplies ; nearly all their 
food and commodities must run the gauntlet of the 
seven seas, where hides the deadly peril of the sub- 
marine. Besides, immense details of troops are being 
constantly shifted from place to place ; in some 
quarters ranks are thinned ; in others they are steadily 
and sometimes suddenly increased. How then is the 
vast task of supplying them achieved ? 

Let us begin at the beginning. You cannot dis- 
tribute food and materials for these far-flung millions 
without assembling at first. Furthermore, you cannot 
mobilize supplies without knowing what and how 
much you want. Hence the corner-stone of the 
immense structure that we are about to explore is 
really need as expressed by the army contract. 

Formerly all British Army contracts were made by 
the Director of Army Contracts at the War Office. 
He was a Civil Servant and, therefore, not a soldier. 
As the armies swelled from hundreds of thousands to 
millions, and as the enormous demands for food and 
supplies began to test and tax the sources of raw and 
finished materials, it became apparent that only 
trained and seasoned business experience couJd 
successfully cope with a situation that threatened 
to be acute and costly. 

Early in 1917 the whole scheme of War Office 
Contracts, which means the provision for all the 



8 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

British Armies, was placed in the hands of Mr. Andrew 
Weir, a civihan. He is a hard-headed, large-visioned, 
self-made Scotchman, a shipping prince whose boats 
are known in nearly every port, and whose name is 
almost as familiar in New York as it is in London. 
The ancient title of Surveyor-General of Supply was 
revived for him. 

Mr. Weir is a member of the Army Council, composed 
of the Chief of the Imperial Staff, the Quartermaster- 
General, the Adjutant-General, the Master-General of 
Ordnance, the Director-General of Military Aeronautics, 
the Director-General of Movements and Railways and 
a Financial Secretary. This Council runs the war so 
far as the British end of it is concerned. At the head 
of it is the Secretary of State for War — the post that 
Lord Kitchener held at the time of his death — ^which 
corresponds to the Secretary of War in our Cabinet, 
but with larger powers. 

We can now proceed to translate the whole system 
of Supply and Transport into the simple terms of 
trade. The Surveyor-General of Supply is the Pro- 
ducer ; the Quartermaster-General is the Distributor ; 
the Army is the Consumer. The only difference 
between this business and a regular business pursued 
for profit is that with the former no selling campaign 
is required. All the output is sold before it is produced. 

Being a business man, Mr. Weir looked upon his 
new work in the light of an industrial enterprise. He 
immediately organized it just as if he were going into 
the busir'^ss of war supply for the rest of his life. 
He kneA\ nothing about war, but he assumed (and 
not without truth) that the principles that had made 
him a successful man of commercial affairs would 
apply to any otiier undertaking. With the organiza- 
tion of the department of a my contracts, you strike 
the first line of scientific d-^^fence that approved trade 
methods have reared abo. the subsistence of the 
British ArnJes. 

To the everlasting credit of the British soldier let 




J 

Frovi a D rawing by Percival Anderson 



ANDREW WEIR, 
SURVE\ iR-GENERAL OF SUPPLY 



WAR AND BUSINESS ^9 

it be said that he welcomed the innovation. The old 
enmity between regular and civilian was at once wiped 
out. The soldier realized that this war has become 
the biggest business of all time. Contact with life 
and business brains and elastic business experience 
has stimulated his imagination and developed his 
initiative. The old-time administrative soldier was 
the slave of red tape ; all his thinking was done for 
him ; everything was by precedent. The men of the 
Quartermaster-General's Department under this new 
association will be masters of trade technique, equipped 
to run any business job when the war is over. 

When you go into the office of the Surveyor-General 
of Supply you think you are in the board-room of a 
great corporation. On the walls, for example, hang 
the diagrams so familiar to American industrial 
establishments. Unfolded on a table is the master 
chart that tells the whole story of army supply from 
the contract's end. 

At the apex of what we in the United States call 
the pyramid of organization is the Surveyor-General 
of Supply, who corresponds to the President and 
General Manager. Next in rank comes the Advisory 
Board, consisting of the Quartermaster-General or a 
representative ; the Master-General of Ordnance or a 
representative, the Finance Member (The Watchdog 
of the British Treasury) or a representative ; and three 
civilians, who are Lord Pirrie, chairman of Harland & 
Wolff's, the famous shipbuilders, and one of the largest 
employers of labour in England ; F. Dudley Docker, 
the George Pullman of England, and builder of the 
first " tanks " ; and P. H. M'Clelland, a shipping 
wizard and all-round man of business. The Assistant 
Surveyor-General of Supply, Mr. Austin Harris — 
another captain of capital — is an ex-officio member. 
This Board, I might add, sits every day on the busi- 
ness at hand, just as the board of directors of the 
Standard Oil Company convenes every morning. It 
knows precisely what is going on all the time. 



lo THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

These civilians emphasize one of the most significant 
phases of the whole supply contract scheme. It lies 
in the fact that in every domain that spends money 
for the army you find what Mr. Weir calls " com- 
mercial members," men recruited without pay from 
the business world, who pass on the economic and 
financial merits of all propositions. In this arrange- 
ment is one of the many valuable lessons that our 
new and growing military establishment may learn 
from the British. 

The work of the Surveyor-General of Supply is 
divided into three main branches — Demands, Con- 
tracts and Administration. Since the word Demand 
will appear frequently in this Chapter and others to 
follow, it may be well to explain just what it means. 
A Demand is the itemized statement in terms of 
pounds, cases, tins, gallons, garments or bushels of an 
army's needs. It may be a single typewritten sheet 
or forty sheets. In the case of ordnance stores for a 
unit like a battalion, battery or a brigade, the list is 
printed in book form and called a Mobilization Unit 
Table. The demand is made up, in the field by the 
Director of Supply and Transport attached to each 
army. There are five complete British Armies com- 
prising the Expeditionary Force in France. He knows 
just how many men and animals he must feed ; how 
many trucks, cars and motor-cycles he must supply 
with petrol and spare parts. Since forces are being 
shifted and changed constantly a new Demand is made 
up each month. The Demand becomes the Food and 
Supply Budget — a definite thing to do business for and 
with. 

You get some idea of the scope of British Army 
Supply provision when I say that since the beginning 
of the war the value of purchases made by the con- 
tracts branch alone has aggregated $3,750,000,000 ; 
that the annual gross outlay now is something like 
$1,750,000,000, and this does not include guns, am- 
munition, aeroplanes or mechanical transport. 



WAR AND BUSINESS ii 

Among the purchases during the war have been 
105,000,000 yards of cloth, 115,000,000 yards of 
flannel, 400,000,000 pounds of bacon, 500,000,000 
rations of preserved meat, 260,000,000 tins of jam, 
167,000,000 pounds of cheese, 35,000,000 knives, 
forks and spoons ; 35,000,000 pairs of boots, 40,000,000 
horseshoes and 25,000,000 gas helmets. 

Looking at this enormous outlay from another angle, 
the British Armies in France alone each month require 
95,000 tons of oats, 4,000,000 gallons of gasolene, 
20,000 tons of flour, 10,000,000 pounds of jam and 
75,000 tons of hay. Ponder on these figures, and you 
begin to think that Demands are written on ten-league 
canvases with brushes of comet's hair ! 

Having seen what a Demand is, we can proceed with 
the specific job of the Surveyor-General of Supply, 
which is to see that contracts are let for the items 
set forth. This brings us to the Demands and Con- 
tracts Divisions. 

Let us take Demands first. They are divided into 
five sections : Stores, which comprise all engineering 
equipment, timber and hardware ; Supplies, which 
embrace all food and fuel ; Works Supplies, such as 
building and trench material ; Clothing ; and Medical 
Stores. 

Each one of these Demands branches has a Supply 
Committee, which includes a Commercial Member 
(the inevitable link with business), a representative 
of the Quartermaster-General's Department concerned 
with this specific article (it may be food or clothing), 
and who is known as the Demanding Officer, and a 
representative of the Director of Army Contracts, 
The post of Director of Army Contracts survives, but 
it is subordinate to the Surveyor-General of Supply. 
Thus the Supply Committee becomes a miniature 
organization of experts which concentrates upon one 
group of supplies. 

Since we have reached the liaison (as the army phrase 
goes) between the Quartermaster-General's Depart- 



12 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

ment and the Surveyor-General of Supply it is im- 
portant that you know just how this former organiza- 
tion is constituted. Henceforth, and until the food 
and supplies reach Tommy in the trenches, you will 
find some member of the force in evidence. 

You have seen how the Quartermaster-General, Sir 
John Cowans, sits in his office at the War Office, head 
of the whole distributing machine, and knowing every 
hour just what the British troops want and what 
they have. Under him are two separate units. One 
is that part of his organization that works at desks 
in the War Office and throughout England, America 
and wherever the British Army buys or makes supplies ; 
the other is an exact replica in the field from Quarter- 
master-General down. There is a complete organiza- 
tion in France and smaller ones in every other theatre 
of war. For the purposes of the present article we are 
concerned with the contingent in England. 

The Quartermaster-General to all the Forces is 
really the Andrew Carnegie of the supply corporation. 
Like Carnegie, he has the ability to select and keep 
capable associates and subordinates. First down the 
line (and in the office next to him) is the Director 
of Supply and Transport, Major-General A. R. Crofton 
Atkins—" Tomm}/ Atkins " is what his colleagues call 
him — titular head of the Army Service Corps, and a 
many-sided individual, who combines the authority 
of the soldier with a rare genius for organization. If 
he had gone into trade in England he would have 
been another Lever or Lipton ; in America, Marshall 
Field and John Wanamaker would have been his 
rivals. 

Under him the British supply machine, buUt to 
meet the needs of 168,000 men (the old regular army), 
has stood the strain of every demand that this war has 
made, which means that it has provided for five 
millions. It is still going strong. In General Atkins' 
office is a chart which sets forth in pyramid fashion the 
work of every branch of the Quartermaster-General's 







\. 



From a Co/'v nxh^eii Porh-aUhy Pe nival .-hide: 
IIAJOR-GENERAI, A. R. CROFTON ATKINS 
DIRECTOR OF SUPl'LY AND TRANSPORT AT THE WAR OFFICE 



WAR AND BUSINESS 13 

Department. The smallest abattoir in the department 
of meat supply is fixed on it. 

Every branch has a number and an executive head. 
Take Food Supplies. It is technically known as 
" Q.M.G. 6," and is headed by an Assistant Director 
of Supplies, Colonel H. F. P. Percival, who has his own 
staff. Each branch, in turn, has various subdivisions 
indicated by letters such as " Q.M.G. 6 A," which has 
to do with the organization of Base and Main Depots ; 
fixing reserves of food to be held in the field ; pro- 
vision of meat stuffs, military butcheries, cold storage 
and refrigerators ; supply accounting and relations 
with the Food Ministry. 

" Q.M.G. 6 B " deals, among many other things, 
with one of the most difficult of all problems — gaso- 
lene ; "Q.M.G.6C" with co-ordination of all demands 
from the field and all questions affecting the shipment 
of supplies (the allocation of tonnage is an immense 
problem), and so on. I merely cite these typical 
duties to show the immense scope of the department. 
There are eleven of these numbered branches, each 
with many subdivisions, yet all are joined by a team- 
work that is one of the wonders of the organization. 
None of the activities clash. Each unit has its rigidly 
defined task. Linked together, they make a marvellous 
machine. 

By this procedure you can understand how easy 
it is for the Surveyor-General of Supply to have a 
competent Demanding Officer from, let us say, 
" Q.M.G. 6 " on the Supply Committee which deals 
with Food Supplies. In this concrete case the De- 
manding Officer is the one who receives the Monthly 
Demand from the Director of Supply with the overseas 
armies. 

Now we can go into the matter of Contracts. The 
Demands Division has already made known the needs 
of the armies. For staple supplies like jam, tinned 
meats, biscuits, flour, sugar and potatoes, which can 
be bought in big bulk, and for articles to be manu- 



14 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

factured, the Surveyor-General of Supply must get 
the Demand three months ahead so as to enable him 
to place orders in America, Australia and Canada. 

In order to co-ordinate the work between Demands 
and Contracts Branches there is a committee in the 
Contracts Department to correspond with every 
Supply Committee in the Demands Section. Like- 
wise there is a General Supply Contracts Board headed 
by the Assistant Surveyor-General of Supply. 

It is in the Contracts Branch that you find the 
commercial domination of war supply at its height. 
In the economies effected, the controls established, 
the mobilization of materials achieved, you get the 
full dramatization of business efficiency. Under its 
constructive influence the army contract as created 
by this war has been purged and sterilized. Instead 
of a juicy plum to be plucked by the despoUers of the 
people's money, it has become a definite business-like 
document safeguarded and supervised at every turn. 

In normal times Government purchase in England 
is by public competitive offering. Where the needs 
of the army form a relatively small part of the avail- 
able production of the country, and where, as a result, 
there is effective and healthy competition, this method 
is the best means to secure satisfactory supplies at 
reasonable prices. 

The tremendous demands of this war upset all these 
conditions. The resources of many trades and in- 
dustries began to be taxed. The gouging of the Govern- 
ment began. But John Bull did not long stand for 
this sort of thing. As early as June 1915, when the 
industries began to feel the strain of the unprecedented 
production, the system was inaugurated of requiring 
contractors to justify their quotations of price by the 
submission of costs, or what the English call costings. 
It limited profits to a reasonable degree and wiped 
out the effect of the artificial market conditions pro- 
duced by the abnormal military demands. 

But this procedure had no statutory authority. It 



WAR AND BUSINESS 15 

was purely a matter of negotiation with individual 
contractors and trade associations. As the armies 
grew and the difficulties of supply increased, these 
more or less amiable methods were found to be in- 
effective. 

John Jones, the manufacturer, capitalized his ad- 
vantage and exacted his pound of flesh. Rotund as 
he is, John Bull declined to stand for the extortion. 
Fangs were put into the Defence of the Realm Acts, 
with the result that a firm's output could be requisi- 
tioned by the Government and a price fixed on a basis 
cost of production plus a reasonable profit on a pre-war 
standard. These powers have been widely used both 
by the War Office and the Admiralty. The mere fact 
that they exist is a bulwark to the public purse. 

Here is the way it works. Let us assume that the 
War Office through the Surveyor-General of Supply 
gets a bid for overcoats at $10 apiece. " All right," 
says the Supply Board, " we will accept that bid 
subject to costings." Accountants are immediately 
set to work upon the contractor's books. If it is 
found that the price is excessive the factory is com- 
mandeered and run by the Government. This whip- 
hand over extortion has had the effect of reducing 
the prices of all war commodities. 

The system in vogue for keeping a check on the 
contractor is very simple. A staff of skilled investi- 
gators visits the plant and checks the details of material 
used from the actual invoices ; of labour employed 
from the wage books ; of overhead charges from the 
trading and profit and loss accounts and of profits 
from the pre-war rate, the present turnover and the 
amount of capital employed. Thus there is no way 
for the contractor to escape absolute and complete 
scrutiny and censorship. 

The savings^^effected in the purchase of Miscel- 
laneous Stores!* (hardware, horseshoes, brushes and 
similar articles) will show the beneficent effects of the 
system. During the twelve months ending April 30 last 



i6 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

the cost of contracts for these stores was $42,500,000. 
These costs were investigated under the Defence of 
the Realm Acts and reductions to the value of $2,000,000 
made. On the first five million dollars the reduction 
was 9 per cent ; on the last it was only 2 per cent, 
which shows that the era of extravagant and padded 
quotations is over. It is only one result of the business 
administration. War is indeed on a business basis. 

But this enormous saving, which applies to practi- 
cally every commodity, is merely one phase of the 
larger rehabilitation of the whole matter of army 
supply. As the demands of the armies increased it 
was found necessary to regulate production in all 
stages of manufacture down to the raw materials. 
Under the Surveyor-General of Supply a Director 
of Raw Materials was appointed in A. H. Goldfinch, 
a manufacturer of wide and seasoned experience. 
The material is either purchased by the Government 
or the transactions in it are controlled under the 
Defence of the Realm regulations. The conversion 
into the finished article is made on a basis of fixed 
price for each process of manufacture. The chief 
raw materials controlled now are wool, jute, leather, 
flax, hemp and semi-finished steel. 

It was impossible to carry out such regulation 
without the aid of experts in the various industries 
affected. A whole new branch composed of trained 
buyers and manufacturers had to be established. 
For the provision of clothing, and including the pur- 
chase of the raw material, not less than one hundred 
technical officers are employed. Most of them are 
civilians who are given commissions and designated 
as " temporary officers " — who enter the service 
for the duration of the war. This same plan has 
been followed in connection with leather, jute and 
flax. 

This all-important branch of army supply has a 
significance that reaches far into the future, and is 
not without its portent for America. The' more 



WAR AND BUSINESS 17 

you see of it the more you realize that this is a war 
of materials of all kinds. So will be the War after 
the War. Germany will only succumb when she 
faces the exhaustion of the materials with which to 
wage the struggle. Upon it likewise depends her 
industrial revival of impotency. 

England's organized control of raw materials not 
only strengthens her weapons of actual physical 
offence, but girds her up for the grilling days of peace, 
when bitter and bloodless trade competition will have 
full sway and when Raw Material will be King. But 
this is a look ahead. Let us see in the concrete terms 
of war economies what the control of materials has 
brought about. 

Take wool. The world shortage was first felt early 
in 1916, and England immediately took steps to 
protect herself against excessive prices and to ensure 
an adequate supply for her military purposes. First 
of all she bought the entire clip for $32,500,000. The 
purchase was made by expert wool buyers. The 
prices were fixed at 35 per cent above those obtaining 
in June and July 1914. High as this was, it was 
considerably lower than the market quotations at the 
time of the purchase. 

As army demands, together with neutral and 
American demands, increased, the whole Australian 
and New Zealand clips were bought for $175,000,000, 
which was 10 per cent lower than the prevailing price. 
The effect of these two operations was to concentrate 
in the hands of the British Government the bulk of 
the v/ool supplies of the Empire. 

To economize transport, the raw wool is shipped 
direct to the manufacturer. The various agencies 
concerned in the processes by which it is converted 
into the finished product are compensated at a price 
based on cost of production plus a reasonable profit. 
In this work you get a gratifying example of co- 
operation, because farmers, manufacturers and trade 
union officials are called in to assist in the operation 



i8 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

of the scheme. The wool which is not required by 
the Government for War purposes is sold at market 
prices. Preference is given to the needs of the British 
export trade for the purpose of maintaining the foreign 
exchanges, and the prices are kept as stable as possible. 

The control of British and Colonial wool has resulted 
in immense economies for the State. The effect of 
war conditions upon market prices of the raw material 
has been greatly minimized, even eliminated, whUe 
the fixed price of the raw material has enabled the 
War Office to control the cost of production at every 
stage. In actual money it has meant a saving to the 
Government of $65,000,000. 

Take leather. The army needs, as may be sup- 
posed, are enormous. Boots, harness, saddlery and 
leather equipment for the horses and belting for 
factories are required in huge quantities. During 
nine months in 1915 the Government bill for these 
supplies was $75,000,000. This tremendous demand 
sent prices soaring, owing to the competition between 
manufacturers for the raw material. So John Bull 
got busy with another control. A statistical survey 
of the tanning trade was made and the visible supply 
of leather commandeered. Exports of leather were 
forbidden, and tanners were assisted to make purchases 
in South America. The fangs of the Defence of the 
Realm Acts were put into the whole business, which 
at once came under military direction. 

The technical and trade experts attached to the 
Contracts Branch were given fuU play for their talents, 
and the whole leather industry took on a new scope 
and life. Among other things, kips for leather uppers 
were bought in large quantities from India, This 
operation became invested with a peculiar interest, 
because the trade was largely in German hands before 
the war. The price of leather produced from these 
kips is about 24 cents a foot, while that of the corre- 
sponding leather from British hides is 42 cents a foot. 
This whole control of leather has not only enabled 



WAR AND BUSINESS 19 

Britain to supply her war needs, but to provide for 
some of the requirements of her Allies. She made 
7,000,000 pairs of boots for the Russian Army. It is 
estimated that the saving to the War Office has 
approximated not less than $15,000,000. This is 
exclusive of the saving in the purchase of the Indian 
kips, where^the economies are about .^$6,000,000. 

So, too, with jute, flax and hemp. The necessity 
for control in these commodities was caused by the 
immense quantities required by the army for sand- 
bags and other jute bags, sacking, tent linen, general 
equipment, aeroplane cloth and rope. The Govern- 
ment prohibited all importation of raw^jute and then 
requisitioned all unsold raw material in the country. 
This was followed by an equitable distribution of the 
supply among the spinners at a fixed price. 

With flax a whole new agricultural activity was set 
in motion. Private import was prohibited and large 
quantities of flax seed were imported and sowed in the 
North of Ireland. The production of seed in Ireland, 
Canada and India was encouraged. It is an evidence 
of the growing desire of Great Britain to be self- 
sufficient during and after the war. As in the cases of 
wool and leather, huge savings have been brought 
about. The control of jute manufacture alone has 
saved the British Government $30,000,000. In hemp 
the margin of profit for shippers has been reduced from 
$175 to $125 a ton. The estimated annual turnover 
on 70,000 tons has produced a combined profit and 
saving of $5,850,000. 

The temptation is strong to linger over more of these 
war economies for the reasons that they have such 
enormous meaning for America and her part in the war. 
The case of barbed wire is one in point. Only those 
people who have seen this war know that it is a war of 
wire. Northern France and Flanders are grim and 
rusty forests of barbed entanglement. 

In 19 15, when the war was getting into its stride, the 
British output of barbed wire had fallen to 250 tons a 



20 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

week. The army requirements were four times that 
much. Barbed wire is produced from wire rods. 
Before the war most of this was secured from Germany 
and Belgium. The German product was the cheapest 
because it was a subsidized industry. This supply was 
automatically cut off by the war. The only source left 
was America, and the price and freight on her output 
rose skyward. 

England thereupon set out to develop her wire- 
rod production. Steel billets were provided by the 
Ministry of Munitions, which controls all the available 
steel, and the furnaces began to roar. Before long the 
output had grown from 250 tons a week to 950. The 
Government reserves the entire output and allocates 
the rods among the various wire makers according to 
their requirements. Not only is the whole industry 
reorganized, but the usual big saving, due to control, 
has been effected. Where wire rods cost $150 a ton 
in the open market the Government produces them at 
about $72 a ton. 

With tea— one of the mainstays of British life and a 
strong support of the Tommy — a tremendous economy 
has been effected by cutting out the middleman and 
transmitting the raw material direct from producer to 
consumer. Formerly the tea was bought where it lay 
and collected by army transport for delivery to a 
bonded warehouse for blending and packing. It was 
then sent to the home supply depots or direct to France. 
This was costly and complicated. 

The tea is now bought f.o.b. Calcutta and other 
places and sent without blending on Admiralty ships 
straight to the depots or to France in the original 
package. There is a big saving both in price and in 
shipping, handling and warehousing. The price paid 
under the old system varied from 20 to 22 cents a 
pound ; under the new arrangement it can be laid down 
for 18 cents a pound. Considering that England is 
buying a total of 60,000,000 pounds of tea this year, 
you can see that it is a considerable item. 



WAR AND BUSINESS 21 

One more commodity — jam — will serve to show 
still another phase of the British war supply economy. 
Until recently the jam was bought by competitive bids. 
Now it is purchased under very unique auspices. 
Eight of the leading jam manufacturers have been 
formed into a Government Committee which buys all 
the fruit necessary for the Government supply. This 
prevents competition and a consequent increase in 
price. The firms are then paid for the actual cost of 
the fruit and sugar used ; for the actual cost of delivery 
of the fruit and sugar to their works and of the finished 
jam to the military depots and for the actual cost of 
time and cases, plus 5 per cent profit if the manu- 
facturers make their own cases. A fixed rate has been 
established for each 100 pounds. It is based on pre- 
vious profits, and all manufacturers have been required 
to produce their books extending back three years 
before the war. Not only is jam cheaper, but it is 
greatly improved in quality. 

I have cited these examples of supply saving to show 
that the conduct of the Business of War is as efficient 
and economical as any enterprise conducted for profit. 
What is equally important is this control procedure 
pointed the way to a post-war industrial regeneration 
that wilFmake the British Empire a formidable world 
trade factor. 



II 

ARMY DEMAND AND SUPPLY 

THE whole procession of army supply begins 
and ends with a contract. How is it 
made ? Consult a chart in the office of the 
Surveyor-General of Supply and you can see 
the consecutive process from the time the Demand 
comes in from the War Area (the field), or the Home 
and other Stations, until the goods are actually de- 
livered to the supply depot or the army units. 

Every tender (or bid as it is known in America) in- 
vited (and exactly 204,985 were asked for during the 
last fiscal year) is on a form specially prepared by the 
War Office. The specification, be it for meat cleaver 
or hospital tent, is carefully drawn, duplicated by the 
hundred, and sent with the blank tender form to the 
bidder. 

At this point you naturally ask : How is the Con- 
tracts Branch to put its finger at once on available 
bidders ? Go to Imperial House in Tothill Street, in 
London, and you will find out. In this immense 
establishment, which houses the thousands of clerks 
of the Contracts Department, you will discover a card 
index containing the names of 70,000 manufacturers 
or dealers. These firms are in every neutral or allied 
country, but mainly in Great Britain, Canada, America 
and Australia. They can produce anything that the 
British Armies want. M^hen the armies cannot get 
what they want from some outside concern they 
make it on their own. 



ARMY DEMAND AND SUPPLY 23 

If, for example, bids for biscuits are desired, you 
simply turn to the cards marked " Biscuits." On 
them you will find the names of every available 
biscuit-producing establishment in Great Britain and 
the United States. More than this, 3^ou will find a 
record of every contract that the firm has had with 
the British Government ; the date and the price. 

Hence all that is necessary is to send blank tenders 
with specifications or samples to every biscuit firm 
on the list. In order to get the widest competition, 
and to encourage all British firms to compete for army 
contracts, samples and specifications are sometimes 
sent to Boards of Trade with a view to interesting 
their members. 

All bids are opened by a Tender Board, consisting 
of the Director of Army Contracts, a representative 
of the Financial Department and a representative of 
the Quartermaster-General. If it is a matter of food 
the latter will be Q.M.G. 6. 

Once the contract is made it is followed through 
every process of manufacture. It is under constant 
scrutiny from inspectors and " speeders up." If a 
contractor lags behind in his order or defaults, the 
Government buys the article contracted for elsewhere 
and charges it up to the delinquent one. 

Every contract goes to the Finance Bureau. Not 
a penny is paid out until actual delivery is certified. 
A cheque is then sent by the Treasury, and the trans- 
action, so far as the Surveyor-General of Supply is 
concerned, is ended. 

You will readily understand that thousands of 
contracts are made every week. How then can the 
Surveyor-General keep tab on all of them ? It is only 
thiough an organized checking system that he can 
find out how much money he is spending for the 
Government. Come with me once more into Mr. 
Weir's office and I will show you how this is done. 

Every morning he finds on his desk a " Daily Return 
of Contracts, Requisitions and Orders to Agents," as 



24 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

it is technically known. It is a huge sheet recording 
every contract made the day before. It shows the 
quantit}^ value and price, together with a statement 
of the last contract made for the same article, the 
price, date and amount then ordered. The onty 
contracts now shown on this Daily Return are so- 
called Exceptional Demands, like orders for tv/o or 
three million blankets. 

Every Monday morning Mr. Weir gets a v/eekly 
contract statement headed : " Approximate Values of 

Contracts during Week ." It shows by days the 

total amounts contracted for in every one of the 
major departments of supply during the preceding 
week. It is divided into two sections : one for con- 
tracts for definite quantities ; the other for " Con- 
tinuation Contracts," which are contracts producing 
fixed quantities weekly or monthly. On this weekty 
contract return is also a statement of Sales by the 
Department. The War Office, as you will see in a 
later chapter, sells as well as buys. The main purpose 
of this sheet, however, is to enable the Surveyor- 
General to knov/ every Monday morning every pound 
that has been spent for supplies the week previous. 

Some sections of the Contracts domain are so huge 
that they become separate and self-sufficient prin- 
cipalities. The Royal Army Clothing Department 
furnishes the most effective example. Here you have 
a monster enterprise that spends $250,000,000 a year. 

The Director-General is Lord Rothermere, a civilian, 
brother of Lord Northcliffe, and cast in the same 
virile and upstanding mould. He controls half a 
dozen industrial establishments, runs a string of 
successful periodicals on the side and represents the 
highest type of commercial magnate recruited for the 
Business of War. He is virtually head of the war- 
created Ready-Made Clothing Trust in England, 
because all needles in the kingdom fly at his will. 
The wearing apparel needs of the British soldiers 
come ahead of those of the civilian. After food, the 



ARMY DEMAND AND SUPPLY 25 

next most important supply item is clothes. The 
machine for the garment and accessory provision is 
characteristic of the thoroughness and efficiency that 
mark the whole British supply organization. It is 
charted and diagrammed so comprehensively that 
you can easily follow every stage. 

The Royal ATmy Clothing Department is primarily 
a vast department store that provides its own stocks. 
The control of wool — which I have described — solved 
the principal problem of production. The contracts 
are let to regular manufacturers. Each one has a 
definite article to produce. It may be jacket, trousers, 
puttee, sock, shoe or cap. There is more to the job, 
however, than merely placing orders and watching 
the goods com.e in. It means constant touch with 
all trade complications, knowledge of raw materials, 
meeting labour conditions and forecasting future 
requirements . 

Inspection plays a large part in the army clothing 
scheme. Every garment must be made up to specifica- 
tions or it goes back to the maker. Some idea of the 
scope and effectiveness of inspection is obtained when 
you learn that out of 3,000,000 pieces of clothing 
inspected last July 117,000 were rejected. Out of 
2,000,000 pairs of shoes sent in 68,000 pairs were 
turned down. In one lot of 184,000 sheepskin coats 
— worn by motor-truck drivers — 27,000 were found 
to be below standard. 

The British Army clothing contract is a model of 
its kind. The Continuation System is used. This 
means that contracts are placed so as to produce 
a given quantity every week. Combined with this 
system is a " Break " clause which stipulates a four 
weeks' notice on either side before the contract is 
broken. In this way the Public Purse is safeguarded 
because in the event that the war ends suddenly all 
contracts can be closed down in one month instead of 
three, six or nine months, which would be the case if 
there were no such agreement. The whole Continua- 



26 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

tion System (which we may well emulate) standardizes 
production and provides for an even and constant 
distribution of work and output. 

The British have found that the key to successful 
army clothing supply is to place orders so that Arrears 
are eliminated. Arrears are goods overdue for de- 
livery. To render them impossible, a census of 
machinery is taken periodically with the idea of placing 
contracts so that no contractor will try to manipulate 
more than the capacity of his plant. He is thus 
prevented from taking on more than he can produce 
and then farming out the surplus to the sweat shop. 

As with food, the clothing supply must be made 
continuous and unfailing. The clothing and accessory 
demands are transmitted from the front to the Divi- 
sional Ordnance Stores officer, who issues the require- 
ments from a Field Base. A check is kept on every 
article that goes out so that it can be instantly replaced. 
If 10,000 overcoats are issued at X Base in France a 
duplicate number are sent over from England the very 
next day, and 10,000 more are ordered from the factory. 

Glance at the statistics of the Royal Army Clothing 
Department and you get a staggering array of figures. 
Since the outbreak of the war 24,500,000 pairs of 
shoes and 17,700,000 khaki jackets have been issued. 
The total issues for the last fiscal year include 12,160,000 
flannel shirts, 26,000,000 socks, 6,000,000 jackets, 
6,000,000 pairs of trousers, 2,200,000 overcoats, 
3,370,000 caps and hats and 3,500,000 cardigans. 

To manufacture and equip this immense array of 
stuff were required 52,000,000 yards of flannel, 
437,000,000 buttons, 5,500,000 yards of overcoat 
cloth, 11,125,000 yards of drab serge and 154,000 
gross of hooks and eyes. 

Yet this is only one detail of Departmental Supply. 
Other items issued during a year by the Royal Army 
Clothing Department maintain the standard of these 
titanic numerals. They comprised 0,148,000 puttees, 
8,000,000 Turkish towels, 3,700,000 tooth brushes, 



ARMY DEMAND AND SUPPLY 27 

2,300,000 shaving brushes, 3,500,000 razors, 4,687,000 
pairs of suspenders, 3,700,000 table knives, 3,500,000 
forks, 3,738,000 spoons and 2,635,000 housewives, 
for Tommy must do his own sewing in the trenches. 
From these facts you can see the enormity of the job 
of equipping the American Army on anything like the 
scale that the European War demands. 

So much for the Contracts Branch. It has done 
its work. Throughout the M'orld the machines in 
thousands of factories are humming to provide the 
supplies that will feed and clothe the British Armies. 
On millions of acres from Canada to Australia crops 
are being grown and harvested, forests felled and 
flocks shorn to the same consuming end. The Producer 
has qualified ; it is now up to the Distributor to take 
up the task. Thus it comes about that we hitch our 
wagon to the star of the Quartermaster-General and 
his cohorts and see how the supplies are mobilized 
and sent on their way to sustain and to clothe. 

At once you find yourself in contact with a close-knit 
and perfectly geared system. But this time you are 
nearer to actual war. You meet with losses ; you 
touch disaster ; you comprehend for the first time the 
wrack and agony of suspense. You find that even 
with the transport of the unromantic biscuit there are 
thrills and dangers. 

It is one thing to order supplies from the safety and 
comfort of an office in London or through an agent in 
Montreal, Chicago or Sydney ; it is quite another to 
get that material across the perilous seas to its 
destination. 

The Quartermaster-General picks up the task of 
Supply from the moment that the contract is made 
and nurses the commodity along every stage of its 
journey toward consumption. This means, of course, 
that there must be, first, the closest possible co-opera- 
tion between the two departments ; second, the most 
intimate co-ordination between the overseas forces and 
the mobilizing and distributing agencies. The whole 



28 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

genius of organization is dedicated to one dynamic 
purpose : not to be caught unawares. Eternal 
vigilance and team work are the watchwords of these 
sleepless stewards of the soldier stomach. 

Two distinct labours confront the Quartermaster- 
General. One is to get the supplies mobilized in 
England (the only cargoes that go straight to France 
are bulk stuff, like oats and flour) ; the other is to 
tranship these supplies to France and the other 
theatres of war in sufficient and continuous quantities 
to maintain the armies. 

You have already seen how the army needs are 
made known through the Monthly or Trimonthl}^ 
Demands. But these Demands are subject to daily, 
even hourly, amendment. Emergencies arise out of 
the swift and tragic march of war events that must 
be quickly dealt with. Here are some instances : 

One day the Quartermaster-General got a telephone 
request from France for one hundred fathoms of wire 
rope with a tensile strength of twenty-five tons. Such 
a rope was unheard of. It later developed that it 
was needed to haul a tank out of a shell hole. The 
only shop in London carrying this cable was discovered, 
and it was on the way to France the next day. 

There is a constant string of requests for articles 
that must be created on the spur of the demand. At 
the height of the first battle of the Somme the terrific 
mud made it necessary to bring up shells on mule and 
horseback. Trucks were useless in the sea of slush. 
" Send carriers for shells," was the frantic appeal 
from the front. The Director of Ordnance and Equip- 
ment Stores devised a scheme of wooden holders 
connected by chains which could be slung over the 
pack animal's back. In forty-eight hours thousands 
of the carriers were not only under construction but 
some were already at the field of battle. 

During that first terrible winter of war, when the 
British regular soldier lived a lifetime of horror in 
the frozen trenches, the problem of a portable food 



ARMY DEMAND AND SUPPLY 29 

container that would keep food hot had to be solved. 
It was impossible to make thermos bottles in sufficient 
quantities, so tin tubs were requisitioned. A layer 
of horsehair — a non-conductor — was put between the 
lining, and it met the requirements. 

About this time came the first attacks of " trench " 
or frozen feet. Not "cold feet" in the American 
slang vernacular, however. A remedy had to be 
found. The Department chemists got the request 
late in the afternoon, worked all night compounding 
a chemical solution and 20,000 gallons were headed for 
the front the following day. 

But irrespective of these unexpected variations 
from the even and nicely calculated course of army 
supply there is always the supreme responsibility of 
keeping the structure intact. The corner-stone of 
this structure is the Reserve, which is a definite quantity 
of food calculated to feed a certain number of troops 
for a certain time. It must be maintained at all 
hazards. It thus becomes the Insurance against 
breakdown in transport ; enemy action — all those 
menaces that beset the lines of food communication. 

All British supply depots are required to keep 
a fixed Reserve. This is why the huge assemblages 
of food in England are called Supply Reserve Depots. 
The Reserve is always designated in terms of days. 
Let us assume for the purpose of illustration that 
the fixed or authorized reserve is thirty days. This 
means that in every depot or base enough essential 
supplies must be kept to feed its dependent army for 
thirty days. The job, therefore, is to keep tab on this 
reserve. Making thirty days the authorized reserve 
gives the Quartermaster-General sufficient leeway to 
replenish stocks even in far-away places like Salonika. 
Here you have the secret of maintaining an uninter- 
rupted supply of food for millions of troops scattered 
in the four quarters of the globe. 

In order to know just where he stands the Quarter- 
master-General must reconcile daily needs (which is 



30 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

consumption), actual reserve available at home and 
abroad and supplies contracted for. This requires 
constant juggling, but it has all been reduced to such 
a precise science that there has never been a break 
in the chain. 

Here is where the co-ordination between the Pro- 
duction and Distribution branches of the Business 
of War proves its value. One of the links is the 
Weekly Progress Report. It is a form — filled in 
with a typewriter — ^which contains a list of all the 
food and supplies contracted for. It is really a book, 
for it includes an index of items and the page on 
which they appear. This report, which is furnished 
by the Surveyor-General of Supply to the Quarter- 
master-General, literally shows " the progress made 
each week towards the completion of contracts entered 
into for supplies for the Expeditionary Forces." I 
quote the exact title. It is a remarkably efficient 
exhibit — another evidence of the ingenuity of the 
supply scheme. 

On this report you see a description of the article 
ordered, the number of the Demand on which it 
originally appears, the name of the contractor, the 
quantity to be produced, the amount already delivered, 
the balance due. If this balance is to be delivered in 
weekly or monthly instalments the precise facts are 
stated. By looking at the Progress Report the 
Quartermaster-General's aide who has to do with 
biscuits, for instance, can tell what the whole biscuit 
situation is. If it is set forth that 10,000,000 pounds 
are to be delivered to the supply depots in England 
on the first of every month he can plan the distribution 
of it to the last tin. So with every item on the 
list. Since the Progress Report meets the require- 
ments as set forth in the Monthly Demand there is 
seldom any surplus. Waste is minimized. 

The Progress Report is just one cog in the system 
of Army Supply Intelligence which enables the 
Quartermaster-General to sit at his desk in London 



ARMY DEMAND AND SUPPLY 31 

with his finger on the control of the whole machine. 
I will now show how it works in connection with 
the Expeditionary Force in France, which involves 
millions of men, hundreds of thousands of animals 
and makes, so far as bulk is concerned, the heaviest 
subsistence demands. Yet it is supplied as easily 
as if it were one- fiftieth the size. 

Every day the Quartermaster-General receives by 
wire from the General Headquarters in France the 
Daily State of Supplies Report. It shows the number 
of days' reserves of all essential supplies — ^food, forage 
and fuel — on hand at noon the day before at all the 
Base and Advanced Supply Depots in France. It 
also shows the authorized reserve ; and the number 
of troops and animals fed. If the authorized raserve, 
let us say, is thirty days and X Depot reports ten 
days' supply of bacon the Quartermaster-General 
wonders why that reserve is not kept up. He has it 
increased at once. He gets a similar telegram from 
every other theatre of war. From these reports is made 
the General Supply State, which is the document to 
which I referred at the beginning of this article, and 
which summarizes the British supply state everywhere. 

Another document which shows the centralization 
of supply information is the Report of Feeding 
Strength which is sent in every day from all the armies. 
This is necessary because of the variety of the demand 
made upon the feeding facilities. On this sheet you 
can see the numerical strength of every army unit 
above Railhead (which means the men at the front) ; 
the forces on the lines of communication which com- 
prise the Army Service Corps, the reserves, and the 
troops resting after having been in action ; hospital 
patients, medical staff, nurses. Allies, civilians and 
prisoners of war. All must be fed. In short, the 
total gross feeding strength is revealed here. One 
distinctive feature of this report is that while it shows 
every mouth that must be fed in France, it also shows 
the quantity of food " packed " for these mouths ; 



34 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

port and returned to the shipper as a receipt ; the 
other remains at the receiving port and becomes the 
first Unk in a new chain of accounting that follows 
the supplies to its final destination. 

In order to obtain the closest possible co-operation 
the Commanding Officer — designated an Assistant 
Director of Supplies — sends a Circular Memorandum 
(mimeographed) around to all his section heads every 
day setting forth the day's requirements in every 
department with special reference to transport. 
Thus the biscuit man knows what the tinned-meat 
man is doing and so on. It enables everybody 
to work together. Likewise there is a Daily 
Progress report showing what has been done the day 
before. 

Each day a report on receipts, packing and ship- 
ments is sent to the Quartermaster-General ; every 
two weeks a complete " State of Supplies Dispatched 
Overseas " is made up showing shipments to every 
port indicating the quantities sent. 

Every device known to modern labour saving is 
in operation here. Even the marking on the packing 
cases is in keeping with the system that rules. The 
cases for France are marked with a green shamrock ; 
those for Salonika are labelled with yellow ink ; for 
Egypt with blue. It is a great aid when a ship must 
be loaded in a hurry, as is always the case. 

One detail at this particular Depot will show the 
completeness with which England watches the rations 
of her troops. In a small building that crouches 
between two towering warehouses is a completely 
equipped laboratory in charge of temporary officers 
who are experienced chemists. Every sample of 
food submitted to the Contracts Branch is tested here, 
and what is more to the point all the supplies that 
come to the Depot are tested to see if they are up to 
the standard. The specimens of oil, pepper, biscuit, 
jam, bacon, baking powder, dried fruit, tinned meat 
and other articles are taken at random from the 



ARMY DEMAND AND SUPPLY 35 

incoming bulk. Woe betide the contractor whose 
goods are found deficient ! 

At this Depot 150,000 so-called Iron Rations are 
packed every day by women. These are the rations 
(biscuit, beef, tea and sugar all packed in tins) that 
the British soldier is required to carr}^ in his haver- 
sack to be eaten in case the food supply in the field 
breaks down. Every precaution is taken to keep 
Tommy from missing a single meal. 

It is worth adding that practically the only regular 
officer at the Depot I have described is the Com- 
manding Officer. All the rest are temporary officers — 
civilians who have come from every walk of life to 
do their "bit." You will find engineers, accountants, 
painters, sculptors, merchants, barristers, architects, 
lecturers, secretaries of smart clubs, manufacturers, 
professional cricketers too old for fighting, even a 
reformed vaudeville artist. It is true throughout 
the whole supply and Transport Service. 

The well-oiled machine which feeds and supplies 
the British Armies and which has just been taken 
apart for your edification would operate serenely, 
almost automatically, were it not for the hazard of 
shipping. The moment you reach the sea, ancient 
" nurse of England," you get at the really acute 
problem of supply, because the most perfect process 
of provision is powerless against the submarine. The 
dangers and difficulties of water transport surround 
the Business of War with constant anxiety. 

Yet the British system has stood against torpedo 
inroads that would have paralysed an organization 
less resilient. Supply transport offers a shining 
mark for the U-boat, because not less than 150 ships 
fly its flag. They are regulated by a Shipping Board 
which meets every Thursday at the War Office. At 
this weekly session tonnage requirements are discussed 
and allotted. On account of the continual movement 
of troops their requirements vary. Deference is 
always made to food and munitions. They have the 



36 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

right of way. For the remaining commodities it is a 
case of " give and take." 

The first question to be settled is that of avail- 
able ports. A harbour may be open for supply ships 
to-day and closed to-morrow by reason of mines, 
enemy action or some other cause. This applies 
both to France and England. The ships therefore 
must be fitted to the ports. Once in a port they 
must be unloaded as quickly as possible. Shipping 
cannot wait. Tonnage these days is as the breath of 
life. 

Because of the incessant sinkings new ships must 
be constantly " found." It is only by the most con- 
stant touch with all shipping movements that the 
pawns can be successfully shifted on this animated 
and momentous chess-board. 

The Quartermaster-General has created an elaborate 
system of contact with all supply vessels no matter 
where they are. Before him every day is a Shipping 
Sheet containing the names of all these ships, just 
where they are and what they are carrying. If a 
vessel loaded with tinned meat and bound from 
America to England is sunk the last cargo is immedi- 
ately reordered by cable. If a ship laden with supplies 
for the overseas forces goes down another is sent out 
at once with a duplicate cargo. No loss is permitted 
to remain a loss. 

The check on forage vessels is an illuminating 
instance of the incessant watch on transport. Take 
oats. Before the Forage Committee (which buys 
all the grain and fodder and which is a part of the 
Quartermaster-General's Service) is a sheet headed 
" Oats Situation." At the top is printed the monthly 
requirements for France, which happens to be 95,000 
tons. Below is a schedule of the actual supply at all 
the depots in France in terms of days. In another 
colunm is a statement of all oats ships " advised," 
together with their last Admiralty-reported positions 
at sea and the tonnage of their cargoes. A Daily 



ARMY DEMAND AND SUPPLY 37 

State of all forage shipments is made :from these 
sheets. 

The tragedies of the torpedo try the soul of the 
forces behind army supply. Out of the daily dramas 
of trial and tribulation come little epics of action ; 
miracles of initiative and resource. There is no 
time for parley or conference. Contingencies must 
be met as they happen. Let me lay bare some of 
these episodes of efficiency that enliven the life of 
the Department : 

One night in the early months of the war the tele- 
phone rang in the office of G.M.G. 6 at the War Office. 
The Colonel in charge took up the receiver. France 
was calling. The Commandant of a large base supply 
depot said anxiously : 

" The German advance has made our three supply 
bases untenable. We must have a new port base by 
to-morrow and enough supplies to feed the Expedi- 
tionary Force." The force then numbered nearly a 
quarter of a million men. 

" All right," replied the Colonel, " it shall be done." 
He called up the Army Shipping Bureau, where 
there is always some one on watch. 

II Have you ten available ships ? " he asked. 
" Yes," was the reply. 

" Then have them all at at six o'clock in the 

morning," was his command. 

He then rang up three Supply Reserve Depots and 
ordered the shipment of supplies on to this port, 
special trains. At noon the next day the loaded 
vessels were on their way to France. It is interesting 
to add that the port used in this emergency is the one 
where the first American Expeditionary Force landed, 
and which is now used by our Governraent. 

Sinkings always call for swift and decisive action. 
A ship loaded with flour for the forces in Mesopotamia 
was sunk in the Mediterranean. Three additional 
ships with duplicates of this cargo were all torpedoed 
in rapid succession. Meanwhile the supply of flour 



38 the;_business of war 

for General Sir Stanley Maude's army was getting 
dangerously low. By an energetic use of the cable 
enough was borrowed from Egypt to tide it over until 
the arrival of the fifth ship, which broke the hoo-doo. 

Here is still another kind of emergenc}^ Last 
winter a big blizzard in the Eastern American States 
congested railway traffic and prevented the wheat 
trains from getting into Hoboken, New Jersey, where 
the British grain ships load. Wheat suddenly became 
very scarce in England. The Forage Board, which 
knew of all available sources, bought up the supply, 
and there was no discomfort. The men of the " Q.M.G." 
always find a way. 

Again, one of the most important ports in France 
was blocked by the sinking of a ship at the mouth 
of the harbour. At this port was a base supply depot 
that fed one-fourth of the British Army in France. 
To open a new port was impossible. Overnight the 
Quartermaster-General's Department shifted the whole 
shipping scheme. A dozen vessels were diverted to 
other ports and the supplies rushed North on special 
trains. There was not an hour's delay in the procession 
of food to the front. 

So it goes. Each day brings its exactions and its 
exigencies and likewise its compensation in the shape 
of victory over threatened disaster. The prosaic task 
of maintaining army supply becomes invested with a 
glamour of adventure no less stirring and romantic 
than the feats of the firing line it feeds . 

In the last analj'sis, War is Worry and Work. 



Ill 

FEEDING THE FIGHTING MILLIONS 



I 



"A HE troops had gone " over the top " 
that morning. Shells still rent the air 
and there was tension aU up and down 
the line. Nearly all the casualties had 
been " cleared," but the list was growing every hour. 
Across "No Man's Land" flared the ominous white 
signals that indicated impending enemy movements ; 
there might be reprisals any moment. It was 
still a ticklish corner for a civilian to find himself 
in. 

Suddenly the appetizing odour of hot stew smote 
the nostrils, overcoming the acrid smell of smoke that 
hung like a pall over the leprous landscape. It was 
like a message from home. 

" Here comes the ' chow,' " spoke up a husky young 
Canadian. 

Hardly were the words out of his mouth before the 
food squad was in our midst with steaming " dixies " 
and the thrill of war was forgotten in the unromantic 
consumption of beef and potatoes, washed down with 
tea. All the time the German guns boomed an 
incessant " strafe." 

Late that afternoon I made my way back to head- 
quarters under the mantle of a friendly haze. Just 
behind the first-line trenches I saw a sinister, crimson 
splcLsh on the ground. 

" What's that ? " I asked the Captain who was 
showing me around. 

39 



40 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

" One of the food squad was ' done in ' here," w£is 
his laconic reply. 

A few hundred yards away we struck the light 
railway that is used generally in the war zone to 
transport supplies. A well-aimed shell had blown up 
fifteen or twenty yards of track only an hour before, 
yet a detail of engineers was already out at work 
repairing it. 

In this little picture you visualize the hazard and 
hardship that attend the bringing up of Tommy's food 
in France. What happened in the bloody angle of 
the battle-line that I have just described is happening 
every day and every night wherever the British soldier 
sets up his fighting abode. Regardless of the deadly 
storm that beats about him, he never misses a meal. 
His rations — even the tin dishes that contain them — 
are cogs in a ceaseless and unfailing system of provision 
that is no less effective under fire than back at the 
original source of supply. From the moment that the 
food and equipment reach the port of arrival in France 
until it is distributed to the soldier in the field it is 
under incessant supervision and accounting. 

In a previous chapter I explained the organization 
which enables the Quartermaster-General to all the 
British Forces to sit at a desk in London with his 
finger on the pulse of the whole Supply and Transport 
situation. I then dealt with the Province of Pro- 
duction, whose titanic demands draw upon the whole 
world of output. Its seat of Government is the War 
Office in London. 

We now enter the Domain of Distribution, whose 
capital is that best known and least known of all 
Allied war establishments, the General Headquarters 
of the British Armies in France, or " G.H.O." as it 
is more commonly known. From this picturesque, 
time-worn building with its cobble-stone court, which 
has jingled with the spurs of many generations of 
French soldiers in the making, radiates the conduct 
and control of a marvellous machine — a Subsidiary 



FEEDING THE FIGHTING MILLIONS 41 

Corporation in the Business of War, but just as many- 
sided and efficient as the Parent Corporation which 
stocks its shelves. 

When you cross the frontiers of the Domain of Dis- 
tribution you become a spectator of the vast Drama of 
Life and Death, whose stage is a far-flung fighting front, 
and whose curtain is a Curtain of Fire. You hear the 
shriek of shells ; you touch the tragedy and terror of 
actual combat ; you see the wounds of war gaping 
before you. Here the ration is as vital as the shell. 
Subsistence means Existence itself ! 

To grasp clearly the whole scheme of British Army 
Supply in France you must first get the details of the 
organization in your mind. To begin with, there is at 
General Headquarters an exact replica of the Quarter- 
master-General's organization at the War Offtce. 
Every head of Department in London has what is 
called an " opposite number " in France. It is headed 
by Quartermaster-General, Lieutenant-General Sir 
Ronald Maxwell, who bears the same relation to the 
supply force in the field that Lieutenant-General Sir 
John Cowans bears to all the forces everywhere. He is 
the ranking subsistence officer in France. 

With the rest of the organization, however, there is 
a slight variation. In the War Office Major-General 
A. R. Crofton Atkins is Director of Supply and Trans- 
port, combining the executive responsibility for both 
branches of the service. In France the task is so 
colossal in actual interpretation that there is a separate 
Director of Supply and a separate Director of Trans- 
port. For the purpose of this article we are concerned 
solely with the problem of Supply. Transport will be 
dealt with later on. 

This means that the dominant personality of this 
narrative is Brigadier-General E. E. Carter, C.B., 
Director of Supply. His desk is the nerve centre of 
the organization that feeds the front and the rear. He 
is big, broad, upstanding and wears a uniform as if he 
were born in it. In the South African War he was 



42 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

Director of Transport, yet he turned as swiftly and as 
competently to the task of Supply as if he had been 
trained for it all his life. It is a tribute to the versa- 
tility of the British regular. Ask him what rules lie 
behind the whole system that he galvanizes and he 
will say : 

" Supplies are valueless unless they are transport- 
able by every conceivable means and reach their 
destination without delay." 

In this sentence you get the keynote of the whole 
Supply organization in France. " Deliver the Goods " 
is the slogan that drives men and motors da}^ and night. 

Let us now examine the task that is put up to General 
Carter. Every day and every night supply ships are 
arriving at various ports in France, laden with food 
and equipment for the millions of fighting men and 
forage and fuel for their horses and mechanical trans- 
port. This immense flood of supplies must be un- 
loaded, some of it stored away in warehouses to keep up 
the fixed reserve as insurance against breakdown in 
transport ; the rest of it goes up the line to maintain 
the war machine. Every pound and parcel must be 
registered and accounted for throughout its journey 
from arrival to consumption. This means keeping 
track of millions of tons of an immense variety of 
articles. 

With Distribution, as with Production, you find the 
triumph of scientific business methods. In General 
Carter's office, for example, is a huge chart, which tells 
the whole story of the extraordinary team work that 
stretches from port to trench. Nothing is left to 
chance. You will discover among other things a 
scheme of auditing that would do credit to a depart- 
ment store. You will see a rentless " follow-up " 
system that pursues the wayward freight car, runs 
down the missing motor-truck, lets no guilty package 
escape and stands as a sleepless guardian of goods. 
Books are kept and accounts standardized. Centraliz- 
ation is the watchword. The Director of Supply can 




Cofy'rixht Photograph by J. Russell &■ So>is 
BRIGADIER-GENERAL E. E. CARTER, C. B. 
DIRECTOR OF SUPPLY OF THE BRITISH ARMIES IN FRANCE 



FEEDING THE FIGHTING MILLIONS 43 

sit at his office at " G.H.Q." and know at any hour of 
day or night what ships and their cargoes are headed 
for his ports ; the exact amount of supphes in pounds, 
gallons and cases that are piled up at every one of his 
many supply depots, and precisely what inroads are to 
be made upon them during the next twenty-four hours. 
In other words, the well-nigh infallible machinery of 
Army Supply Intelligence is at work all the time. 

Nov/ all these remarkable results are only obtainable 
through one agency — Co-operation. I have rarely 
seen any^vhere such team work as obtains in the drama- 
tization of the Army Supply idea in France. It is just 
as if a monster jobbing business had been reared by 
the British Government and dedicated to meeting the 
requirements in the field. Wherever you turn you 
find the parallel with trade. 

Here as elsewhere in the Commissariat the helpful 
pyramid points the way. At the apex of it is the 
Director of Supply, who occupies the position of Vice- 
President and General Manager, the Quartermaster in 
the Field being the President, Ranking next to the 
Director are three Deputy Directors of Supply. One 
has charge of the Inspection of all supplies ; a second 
is the Chief Office Assistant, who corresponds to an 
Office Manager in an American business ; the third is 
the head of the so-called Investigation Department, 
which audits accounts and deals with Finance and 
Economy. 

The Deputy Director of Supplies in charge of the 
office has three assistants who rank as Assistant 
Directors of Supply. The first of these deputies deals 
with the all-important matter of Demands. It is to 
him that the needs of the armies in the field are made 
known, and he in turn transmits the Demand covering 
these needs to the Quartermaster-General in London, 
who provides the supplies through the Surveyor 
General of Supply. 

The second Assistant Director of Supplies is charged 
with the supervision of Shipping and Transportation, 



44 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

while the thh-d has to do with Personnel. This group 
of officers comprises the Supply Directorate. It cor- 
responds precisely with the Board of Directors of a 
Corporation, each Director being the head of a depart- 
ment. This Board meets every day. Every man, 
therefore, knows what his colleagues are doing, and is 
in touch with the whole field supply situation. 

This Supreme Court of Supply is merely the' Head- 
quarters Organization. For all practical purposes it 
is duplicated in the field. One section isFat the front, 
where each one of the five armies has itsjown Deputy 
Director of Supply and Transport. On the so-called 
Lines of Communication — ^the water, rail or public 
roads along which the Army and the supplies travel 
— there is still another Supply Machine, including a 
Deputy Director of Supply for the Northern Line, 
and a corresponding executive for the Southern Line. 

This brings us to the whole lay-out of Supply, 
which is set forth on what';- may well be called The 
Map of Distribution in France. There are many 
remarkable charts and diagrams in the scheme of 
Army Provision, but none exceeds this one in efficiency 
and detail. A child could understand it. It in- 
carnates scientific business organization. 

Spread it out before you, and you can see in red, 
blue and green lines and a succession of coloured 
circles, triangles and squares the whole scheme of 
supplying and equipping the armies, from the wharf 
in the French port straight through all the processes 
and repacking and transhipping up to the first line 
trenches. Every line on the map has a caption that 
explains precisely the activity that happens on it. It 
may be the shipping of bulk forage and grocery trains 
from a base port to an Advanced Depot. It may be 
an indication of the route of meat supplies, packed 
in detail at the wharf and bound for a freight station. 
It may reveal the movement of coal from the mines 
to the Railhead, or it may emphasize in a red circle 
that X Base is used solely for canned goods. I give 



FEEDING THE FIGHTING MILLIONS 45 

these facts merely to show that the system was on 
paper before it was translated into practice. 

Now let us see how it works in actual operation. 
For the purpose of Army Supply the whole of Northern 
France has been divided into two districts. One is 
the Northern Line of Communication, and includes 
two major ports of entry and a minor one. These 
ports feed and supply three of the armies. On the 
Southern Line are three major ports which feed, fuel 
and supply the two remaining British Armies. All 
the ports are called Base Supply Depots. By reason 
of the proximity of the Northern Ports to the fronts 
of the armies, there is a slight difference between the 
organization of the Northern and Southern Lines. 

This difference lies in the fact that on the Northern 
Lines the food practically goes straight from the Base 
Depot to the Railhead — ^that is, to the terminus of 
the railway line, while on the Southern Line it goes 
in bulk to what is called an Advanced Base Supply 
Depot, where it is repacked into Divisional Trains, 
each one supplying the needs of two Divisions and 
sent on to Railhead. At the Railhead the system of 
distribution is the same for both lines. Here the 
supplies are unloaded on motor-trucks, and sent to 
what is called a Refilling Point, where they are in 
turn transferred to horse-drawn wagons and taken 
up to the trenches. This, in brief, represents the 
main itinerary of the food from the time of its arrival 
until it reaches the Quartermaster of the fighting 
unit, usually a Brigade Officer, who distributes it 
among the Regiments (or Battalions as they are 
known in the British Army). The miracle of all this 
shipping and reshipping, packing and repacking is 
that there is a definite record and check on every tin 
of beef until it reaches the kettle or the pot. 

There is still another slight difference between the 
Northern and Southern Lines. At the former all 
kinds of food and commodities are received at the 
same ports, while at the latter each port specializes. 



46| THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

This means that in the North a Base Supply Depot 
houses petrol, groceries, meat and forage, while in 
the South one port deals exclusively with forage, 
another with petrol and cased goods, and the third 
with bread and Ordnance Stores. Here, then, you 
have a general bird's-eye view of the Domain Dis- 
tribution. 

The whole operation is of peculiar interest and value 
to the United States, because our overseas troops 
face precisely the same conditions, both as to ports 
and lines of communication. In fact, the American 
Expeditionary Force is using an abandoned Base 
Supply Depot established by the British in the early 
days of the war. 

But we cannot go into the feeding and supplying 
of the armies without first finding out what the tools 
of the trade are. With fighting these tools are men 
and guns ; with Supply and Transport they are, in 
the main, men, motors and wagons. The men who 
comprise the Army behind the Army are the Army 
Service Corps — the unsung heroes of the hard-fought 
battles with wind, mud, rain, shells and every other 
menace that besets the transport of supplies under 
actual war conditions. 

The story of the Army Service Corps is in itself a 
romance not without thrills and heroism. It began 
with Wellington's Royal Wagon Teams ; later became 
the Commissariat and Transport in the Egyptian 
Campaign and had its baptism of blood in its present 
form in the Boer War. For years it was a sort of 
Cinderella of the Army, rejected and despised by the 
men of the line. There is caste in War just as there 
is in Society. Yet the aristocrats of the forces would 
be impotent without the " Underground Cavalry," as 
the Army Service Corps is sometimes called. 

At the beginning of the war it numbered less than 
10,000 men and a few hundred officers. To-day it is 
more than thirty times that number — a host greater 
than the Iron Duke ever commanded — one that vies 



FEEDING THE FIGHTING MILLIONS 47 

in strength with Napoleon's mightiest array. You 
comprehend the scope of Supply and Transport and 
the millions that they serve when it takes such an 
army to fetch and carry alone. 

There is no space here to tell how the Army Service 
Corps is recruited and drilled ; how the men are 
assembled and weeded out according to their previous 
civil experience in the huge training camps in England ; 
how a farm hand becomes the driver of a horse-wagon ; 
and the one-time chauffeur of a peer's Hmousine in 
London becomes the driver of a five-ton motor-truck 
in France ; how grocers' clerks develop into Supply 
Depot stackers ; how brokers, bankers, expert 
accountants and business men in general are trained 
to be the officers of these battalions. These men from 
the ranks of trade become the " Temporary Officers," 
to whom Britain owes so much. 

There are Schools of Instruction in France at the 
Base Supply Depots where both officers and men get 
a final course of intensive training. The men are put 
through their paces in the handhng of horses, harness 
and wagons and the upkeep of mechanical transport. 
The officers are sent to school, where there are daily 
lectures, and where they are taught how to take their 
places as cogs in the whole system of Provision? and 
Accounting. There is a series of text-books for these 
schools just hke the text-books used in a university. 
The officers are required to pass an examination, and if 
they fail they are sent back home. 

One of these text-books — and it wiU give you some 
idea of the thoroughness of the course — is called 
" The Ready Reckoner." In this book a Supply 
Ofiicer is shown how to divide up rations. He is 
shown, for example, that if 160 complete daily rations 
are issued to him he can find out the bacon allowance 
by dividing this by four, which gives him 40 lb,, 
or the exact amount of bacon required. He is further 
shown that, if he divides the bacon result by two, he 
can get the butter, cheese and oatmeal allowance, which 



48 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

is 20 lb. each. The whole system enables the conduct 
of the commissariat to become mistake-proof. 

No Class A men are now used in the Army Service 
Corps. Class A men are fit for fighting. In the early 
days of the war there were many of them on the Lines 
of Communication, but as the armies expanded and 
the losses grew they were all weeded out. Thus in 
the " A.S.C." you find thousands of middle-aged 
patriots who are doing the work of younger men. 

Nor is all this patriotismfconfined to the middle-aged. 
i was talking one day to the Commanding Officer of 
the largest Base Supply Depots in France when an 
erect, white-haired man wearing the single star of a 
subaltern came up, saluted and gave a message in 
precise mihtary fashion. When he was through he 
clicked his heels together, saluted again, and, with a 
" Thank you, sir," made off, 

" Do you know who that officer is ? " the Colonel 
asked of me. 

" No," I replied. 

" He is my father." 

In this case the father was seventy-one years old, 
and a country squire, but, like many of his country- 
men, he felt that he had to be doing something. It 
is this sort of spirit that will win the war. 

One more highly important detail must be mastered 
before we can proceed with the operation of the Supply 
and Transport in the field. This detail deals with the 
most important freight that Transport is called upon 
to convey. I mean, of course, food and its accessories. 
Here we reach the one war subject of universal interest. 
Everybody eats ; therefore, everybody is interested 
in the kind and quantity of food that the soldier gets. 
We will halt our line of inarch, therefore, and take a 
] ook at Tommy's larder. 

What most people do not realize is that Thomas 
Atkins is probably the best-nourished soldier in the 
world. He is fed like the proverbial fighting-cock. 
Moltke once said that " no army food is too expensive." 



FEEDING THE FIGHTING MILLIONS 49 

This conjunction, laid down by a master of warcraft, 
is followed to the letter. There is no scandal of 
embalmed beef about the British Commissariat. The 
soldiers get the best that the market affords, and lots 
of it. Officers and men have precisely the same ration. 
I have eaten at many a Tommy's mess at the front 
and behind the lines, and I have always found the 
food abundant and excellent. Indeed, after courting 
eternal indigestion with French war bread (it is one 
of the real horrors of war) it is always a luxury to get 
the field-baked white bread which is part of the British 
army ration. 

The soldier's daily ration has been scientifically 
worked out by the best food experts of England. 
In the Boer War it was one and one-fourth pounds of 
biscuit, one pound of fresh meat or one pound of tinned 
meat, four ounces of jam, three ounces of sugar, two 
ounces of desiccated vegetables, one-half ounce of 
tea, half an ounce of coffee and pepper and salt. This, 
however, was hermit's fare compared with the almost 
infinite variety of food available for the fighting men 
to-day, because, as you may recall, there are exactly 
four hundred and fifty items on the Quartermaster- 
General's list of Supplies. 

At the beginning of the present war the Boer War 
ration was immediately reinforced by four ounces of 
bacon, three ounces of cheese, extra tea and one-eighth 
of a tin of condensed milk. This ration was the same 
for the men training at home and in France. Later a 
ration allowance of eight cents a day for each man was 
made to take the place of part of the home ration, and 
to be spent under the direction of the Officers of Unit. 

Early in 1917 a very radical amendment was made 
in the ration scale in France. Two rations were 
established : one for the troops at the fighting front, 
who had to depend upon what is issued to them and 
who undergo severe physical hardships, and another, 
and slightly smaller, ration for the troops on the Lines 
of Communication. The food for the fighting men 



50 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

is practically the same as for the men in the rean 
The only difference is that they get more of it ihe 
Ighting'^.r " Field Ration " costs forty-five c^ts per 
day per man, while the so-called L.O.C. Ration 
costs thirty-nine cents. . . 

Meat, of course, constitutes an important item m 
the stoking of the soldier's stomach. The British 
Tomrny s a carnivorous animal, and must have his 
beeT. The normal daily ration for the fighting man s 
one pound of fresh or frozen meat. Three day out 
of every seven he also gets a small Potion of the 
so-called " M. and V." ration, which is meat and vege- 
tables cooked and canned. Four days out of seven, 
Instead of the " M. and V." ration he gets a similar 
porSn of canned pork and beans. There is also an 
allowance of four ounces of bacon, which is served at 

"aTis a very important item. The regular daily 
allowance is one pound of fresh bread or ten ounces of 
Hscuit. Usually the bread ration is so arranged as to 
iSe 75 per cent of bread and 25 per cent of biscuit^ 

oiher items in the normal daily allowance for the 
troops at the front are ten ounces of rice, two ounces 
of butter, which is served three times a week, three 
ounces of jam, five-eighths of an ounce of tea (or coffee 
Xn desired , two Sunces of cheese, two ounces of 
oatmeal three times a week, three ounces of sugar 
one ounce of condensed milk, an ounce of pickles three 
toes a week, two ounces of potatoes, eight ounces o 
frSh vegetables when obtainable, or two ounces of 
dried vegetables as a substitute, salt pepper and 
mustard. As a luxury each man gets two ounces of 
sToking tobacco or cigarettes once a week and a 
box of matches three times during the fortnight^ 

Rum is served at the discretion of the General 
Ofiicer commanding. Its issue depends upon ]ust jhat 
the troops are doing. In very cold weather a nip is 
given out every day whether the men are m the first- 
iTne trenches or behind. Rum is always issued, how- 



FEEDING THE FIGHTING MILLIONS 51 

ever, in that ghastly moment just before daybreak, 
when the troops " stand to " with ears, eyes and 
heart alert, waiting for the enemy attack that some- 
times comes and sometimes does not. No ordeal, not 
even going " over the top," is such a strain on nerves 
as this moment of tense expectancy. The most 
copper-riveted of Prohibitionists would not begrudge 
Tommy his wee drop of consolation at this hour of 
dread and dawn. 

The " L. of C." ration, which is also served to the 
" G.H.Q." troops, is precisely the same as this except 
that, instead of a pound of fresh or frozen meat each 
day, only twelve ounces are issued. The issue of the 
remaining items on the list is on a corresponding scale 
of reduction. 

The ration that I have described is the regular issue. 
It has become, however, a sort of elastic institution, 
adapting itself to season and locality. At some of 
the huge camps the men raise their own vegetables, 
the garden being tended by the permanent force. At 
one camp in France I saw a pig-sty and a rabbit-warren 
which enriches the diet and provides extra luxuries 
for the men, because some of the meat is sold to the 
natives . 

Then, too, a so-called System of Substitution adds 
to the variety of Tommy's food. Last summer when 
bacon was scarce all over England, sausage, fish, 
rabbits and brawn (or chopped meat) were substituted 
for the home forces. The War Office now controls a 
whole chain of sausage factories, and a sausage issue 
takes the place of fresh meat one or two days a week 
in the field. This will mean a saving of five million 
dollars a year to the Government. When I left France 
the Director of Supply was establishing piggeries to 
maintain a steady supply of bacon. 

Long experience with the feeding of soldiers has 
taught the food experts that the best way to keep men 
fit is to vary their diet as much as possible ; hence the 
substitution is carried out to the last degree. Sardines, 



52 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

or tinned herring in tomatoes, or canned veal loaf often 
take the place of preserved meat at the midday meal, 
while Cambridge sausage or roast sausage is used in 
lieu of bacon at breakfast. 

The British Tommy, unlike the French poilu, has 
two big meals a day. He has his bacon or tinned 
meat of some kind, bread and jam for breakfast, 
while at lunch he has stew or " bully beef," potatoes, 
vegetables and always a dessert, more often a pudding 
of some kind. His evening meal comes under the head 
of " tea," and includes cold meat, bread and jam. 
In the trenches supper is always hot. At all three 
meals he has his option of tea or coffee. These are 
the standard menus, subject always to amendment 
by reason of the system of substitution that I have 
described. 

Now if the "Field" and " L. of C." rations were 
the only food issues the task of provision would be 
comparatively easy. But the British Armies in France 
to-day are such a cosmopolitan assemblage that the 
matter of diet is as complicated as that of a World 
Food Congress recruited from all the nations of the 
universe. It results from the fact that when Britain 
sent out her trumpet-call throughout the Empire, all 
the peoples of her dominions came flocking to the 
standard. They represent every race under the 
British flag, and this means that white, brown, yellow 
and black men are geared up to the Great Cause. The 
Brahmin, Mohammedan, Chinaman, Kafir, Egyptian, 
Fijian, the East Indian, West Indian and South African 
all meet at John Bull's mess-table. With the excep- 
tion of the East Indian Cavalry they are enlisted in 
the Labour Battalions. 

You have a conflict of religion, taste, habit and 
custom, and every one of these eccentricities, born of 
climate, temperament, and tradition, must be met and 
appeased. If not, the fighter or labourer is dissatisfied 
and his efficiency is impaired. Hence a separate and 
distinct ration is issued to every one of these foreign 



FEEDING THE FIGHTING MILLIONS 53 

groups. At one Base Supply Depot exactly seventeen 
different diets are supplied. 

The Indian personnel, for example, has a ration 
which consists of atta, mealie meal ; dhal, a spUt pea ; 
ghi, or nut oil, which is a substitute for butter; 
gur, a native sugar ; mixed spices, fresh vegetables 
and fresh meat. 

The meat for the East India troops is obtained 
in very picturesque fashion. The East Indian will 
only eat goat and sheep meat, and this only when 
the animal is killed according to native rites. Near 
one of the British Base Depots in France is a huge 
goat and sheep farm, which is conducted entirely 
for the native troops. Every day you can see bearded 
and turbaned priests slitting the throats of the 
beasts with much Oriental ceremony. When the 
natives get their meat they know it is not profane. 
No British Quartermaster would dare to try to deceive 
them. 

The Fijians have a ration of frozen meat, rice, 
sugar, fresh vegetables, margarine or some other 
edible fat, while the Chinese are content with a little 
meat and a large amount of rice and bread. One of 
the luxuries of the Chinese diet is nut oil. Lentils, 
cheese, fresh vegetables and bread form the larger 
part of the menu of the Egyptian labour corps. So it 
goes. Every taste must be pandered to. It is the 
price that must be paid to keep the huge labour machine 
oiled and going. 

Nor must it be forgotten in connection with field 
rations that there is also a separate diet for the German 
prisoners of war, who are technically divided into 
what is known as "P. of W. Companies," and segre- 
gated in camps surrounded by barbed-wire fences. 
The British have found that it is both practical and 
expedient to let the German prisoners run their own 
mess. The normal daily ration of a captured Hun is 
nine ounces of bread, six ounces of fresh or frozen meat 
five days a week and ten ounces of salt-cured herrings, 



54 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

sprats or smelts two days a week. He also gets half 
an ounce of tea or coffee, an ounce of sugar, four 
ounces of potatoes, two ounces of turnips and peas 
or beans, three ounces of rice, two of oatmeal and 
a little jam and cheese. Recently the British have 
succeeded in making the so-called Schwarzbrot, which 
is the familiar black bread of Germany. This not 
only makes the Boche happier but saves considerable 
money to the Government. 

Then, too, the British issue food to the French, 
Belgians, Portuguese and American troops in some 
instances, and also to the Women's Army Auxiliary 
Corps, or the " Waacs " as the^^ are called. You 
can see, therefore, that with all these different types 
of rations, with the Iron Ration — the tinned emerg- 
ency food that every soldier carries in his haver- 
sack — and the Train Ration which is given to the 
troops for consumption while travelling on boats or 
trains, there is an immense amount of detail to the 
provision of the inner man alone. 

Fortunately, animals have no choice of food, and 
the issue of forage is a simple matter. Heavy draught 
horses get seventeen pounds of oats and fifteen pounds 
of hay a day, while officers' mounts and other horses 
get twelve pounds each of oats and hay. This is also 
the forage ration for mules of fifteen hands and up- 
wards that are employed on heavy draught work. 



IV 
FROM SHIP TO TRENCH 

YOU have now seen the kind of food that man 
and beast require. You have also had a 
swift panoramic ghmpse of how it is trans- 
ported from ship to stomach. We can now 
go into the work of this system which receives, checks, 
accounts, stores and sets it down at the very threshold 
of consumption. 

Perhaps the best way to continue the parallel with 
business would be to regard the huge Base Supply 
Depot as the Wholesale Branches and the so-called 
Detail Issue Stores where the units on the Lines 
of Communication get their rations as the Retail 
Branches. Keep this distinction in your mind and 
it will be easier to follow the sequence of food 
events. 

Anj'' port will serve to begin with, because the 
system is the same for all. Let us first take the 
largest of all the ports of entry in France. It is on 
the Southern Line, and, therefore, specializes in sup- 
plies. In this particular instance the specialties are 
forage, frozen meat and flour. 

Since this port is on the Southern Line and therefore 
somewhat different in executive organization from 
the Northern Line, it may be well to say that the 
ranking officer is technically known as the Officer 
Commanding Base Supply Depot. His chief is an 
Assistant Director of Supplies, whose headquarters 
are at the main Advanced Base Supply Depot that he 



56 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

serves, and who in turn reports to the Director of 
Supplies at General Headquarters. 

A Base Supply Depot is simply a collection of huge 
sheds, or hangars, as the British call them. In this 
particular case they are all near the docks, where 
the goods can be readily rem^oved from the ship and 
immediately stacked. Formerly all the work of 
Supply and Transport from the time a supply ship 
reached port was done by the Army Service Corps. 
In the autumn of 1917 the job of unloading the vessels 
was taken over by the Director-General of Trans- 
portation, who supervises the unloading. The actual 
piling up of the supplies is done under the direction 
of the Department of Labour, which controls the many 
native labour battalions. But the moment the supplies 
are piled up in the hangar they pass into the hands of 
the Army Service Corps, and remain in its keeping 
until it reaches the kitchen, the stable or the garage. 

As soon as a supply ship touches at a Base Depot 
it is caught up in the toils of a perfect system. First 
of all, one of the duplicate invoices of cargo that 
accompanies the vessel is checked up and sent back 
to the port of departure in England or Canada as a 
receipt that the goods were delivered. The other 
duplicate invoice now becomes the first Hnk of an 
endless chain of accounting that lasts until the sup- 
plies are consumed or destroyed. 

Probe into the whole Base Supply System and you 
find th^t the motto unfurled at the flag-pole is " Cut 
the Carry," which means that economy of time and 
labour in the handling of the immense stores is the key- 
note of progress. Everything is bent toward this end. 
Goods are stacked up so that they can be counted 
swiftly and easily. For this reason ever^:^ pile of hay, 
oats, flour or canned goods has, hanging alongside, 
what is known as a Tallyboard. This board contains 
the letter of the shed or hangar (each shed has a letter) , 
the number of the block (every different kind of com- 
modity has a block or a street) and every stack in that 



FROM SHIP TO TRENCH 57 

block has a number. Additions or withdrawals from 
any block or stack of supplies are recorded on it and 
can be seen at once by the checkers-up. You could 
make a complete inventory of a Base Supply Depot in 
an incredibly short time. 

One reason is that the stacking of supphes is scientifi- 
cally done. In harmony with the perfection of detail 
that marks the whole system, the Director of Supply 
has prepared a Manual for the Army Service Corps 
called The Stacking and Storing of Supplies, which 
shows with simple and comprehensive tact and with 
cross-section illustrations just how stacks of cased 
goods, sacks, bales of hay can be piled up so as to 
expedite accounting and unpacking. From this you 
learn that there are such things as " Pillar Pile " for 
cases ; and " Tower Stacking " which enables the 
supplies to be carried up to the roof. 

One chapter in this book shows how much space is 
required for storing and stacking rations forfgiven 
numbers of men and horses. A man, for example, 
can look at a pile of boxes and see at a glance how 
many troops it will feed. 

Here, as elsewhere throughout the whole Empire of 
Supply and Transport, absolutely nothing is left to 
chance. x\ll Supply Officers, for example, no matter 
where stationed and who have the slightest contact 
with Supplies, must master a book entitled " Financial, 
Economic and Accountancy Regulations and Depart- 
mental Instructions." Every detail of work is here 
specifically explained. It thus becomes the Bible of 
Supply. You get the ke5mote of the whole Com- 
missariat when you find that one of the first para- 
graphs in the book is this : 

" In time of peace the interests of economy, while 
entrusted in various degrees to administrative and 
other officers, are also safeguarded by various checks 
and Umitations, and in particular by the total 
amounts voted by Parliament under the several 



58 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

heads of the estimates. During war, however, not 
only are these hmitations to a certain extent re- 
moved, but the total expenditure is on a vastly 
larger scale. The possibilities of economy open to 
officers are consequently increased, and the elimina- 
tion of waste in every branch of the Service becomes 
a matter of primary importance, and should be the 
object of particular concern to each individual 
officer," 

Now let us see what happens at a Base Supply Depot. 
The one I shall use for illustration is mainly used in the 
second largest hangar in the world, which is more than 
half a mile in length and over six hundred feet wide. 
It adjoins the biggest dock in France and is hke a com- 
plete freight city under one roof. I have seen it when 
it contained 80,000 tons of supplies, of which 30,000 
tons were in oats, 20,000 tons in hay, while the rest was 
flour and cased goods. 

The hangar was a babel of foreign tongues. You 
heard Kafir boys singing as they carried sacks of oats 
from ship to stack ; a song of the Nile came from the 
Egyptian coolies, who hummed as they staggered under 
bales of hay ; you caught the note of a sentimental 
German lullaby whistled by a prisoner of war, trundling 
a truck of canned groceries. Here was a whole world 
of labour, recruited from friend and foe alike, and 
marshalled to the stupendous task of feeding the 
British soldier. Amid an almost indescribable din and 
what seemed to be the wildest confusion there was 
admirable control. 

The Commanding Officer of the Depot, sitting at his 
desk in a little frame office that is almost lost between 
his towering ramparts of food and forage, is absolute 
master of the tumultuous situation. He is on his job 
at eight o'clock. At eight-thirty he has a conference 
with representatives of the Admiralty, the Director 
of Docks, the Director of Labour and the Director- 
General of Transportation, Thus he knows what 



FROM SHIP TO TRENCH 59 

cargoes are to be landed and what human and other 
machinery are to handle them. 

More than this, he also knows every hour precisely 
how his whole monster business stands, down to the 
last case of jam. How is this possible when from 
20,000 to 30,000 tons of supplies arrive and depart 
daily and when all these goods are being constantly 
transferred from one place to another ? 

The answer is quite easy. Such a complete check 
is kept on every pound of incoming and outgoing stuff 
that the " O.C.," as the Officer Commanding is called, 
is able to send his chief at the Advanced Supply Depot 
what is called the Daily Stock Wire, which tells the 
precise amount of supplies on hand and what is due to 
arrive the next day. This is achieved by balancing 
Receipts, as the incoming suppHes are termed, and 
Issues, as the outgoing supplies are known. The 
surplus is technically known as Remains. This is ob- 
tained through a simple but effective process. Each 
group of commodities is in charge of a Section Ofhcer, 
who renders a Daily State of his department every 
night. This sets forth specifically the amount of food 
he has on hand the preceding night, the day's Receipts 
and Issues, the Transfers or Issues for local troops and 
the Remains, at the time of making the report. The 
sum of these Daily States furnishes the information 
conveyed in the Daily Stock Wire. 

The Daily Stock Wire is necessary to the Deputy 
Director of Supplies at the Advanced Base Supply 
Depot, who must know just the amount of goods he can 
draw on. Remember at this point, that the advanced 
Base Supply Depot is the link between Base SuppUes 
and Depot and the Regulating Station where the 
Supply Trains for the front are made up. If there is 
a sudden increase of troops in the field and more 
supply trains must be made up every day, the Deputy 
Director of Supplies knows immediately that demands 
for more food can be filled at once. It is part of the 
perfect interlocking of supply forces. 



6o THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

The supplies from the Base Supply Depot which 
I have just described — and it is typical of all in the 
Southern Line — are shipped in bulk ; that is, in solid 
trains of bread, meat, forage, flour, petrol or groceries. 
These trains, with the exception of those carrying 
groceries, go direct to the Regulating Station, where 
the freight is repacked on to the Divisional Trains, 
The grocery trains are unpacked at the Advanced 
Base Supply Depot and the freight sorted out according 
to Divisional needs. 

One reason why there is such a constant procession 
of bulk trains out of the Base Supply Depots is that 
there must be a quick turnover at the ports, because 
vessels are coming in every day and a congestion of 
shipping would be fatal. One day's hang-up might 
clog the supply machine all the way up to the first-line 
trenches. These bulk trains are loaded inside the 
hangars. The stacks are all piled alongside the tracks 
so that loading is expedited. " Cut the Carry " is 
carried out to the last degree. 

Every bulk train from any Base Supply Depot on 
the Southern Line includes bread. This is because no 
Base is complete without a Field Bakery. Bread, 
when all is said and done, is the soldier's staff of life. 
He must get it in continuous and enormous quantities. 
This means that the dough troughs and the ovens must 
be constantly in action. 

f'4These bakeries are all operated by Army Service 
Corps men, most of them practical bakers before they 
went to the war. These establishments are marvels 
of output. They are all practically alike in operation, 
although in some the dough is kneaded by hand and 
in others by machinery. The standard loaf for the 
troops weighs two pounds, which is two normal daily 
bread rations. The average output! of the largest 
Field Bakery is 220,000 loaves a day, or;440,ooo rations. 
They work day and night. 

These Field Bakeries are models of production. It 
takes just three hours for the flour to pass from^barrel 



FROM SHIP TO TRENCH 6i 

to baked bread. Once baked, it is stacked in bins for 
twenty-four hours, then sacked, weighed, loaded into 
a freight truck and rushed off to the; Advanced Base 
Supply Depot. The railway trucks come right into 
the bakery sheds. No army bread is served to the 
troops until it is ninety-six hours old. Part of this 
time, however, is consumed in transit. 

The same scientific scrutiny is placed over the army 
bread as over every other article that Tommy eats. 
At these Field Bakeries you will find complete labora- 
tories which bake and wash and test samples of all 
the flour to ascertain its ingredients. One reason for 
this close watch is that the soldier's bread — unhke the 
bread of civil life — must do considerable travelling. 
If there is an excess of sharp-pointed bran in the flour 
it will puncture the cells of gluten, on the road, and 
impair the nutritive quality of the loaf. In other 
words, the flour must be so mixed as to get a sufficient 
gluten percentage to withstand the hardship of much 
rough jolting and rehandling on the railroad. You 
will also find in these laboratories a dough meter, 
which analyses samples of all the dough that is mixed. 
The big fact about the Field Bakery, aside from the 
enormous output, is that the soldier's bread is safe- 
guarded by every device known to science. 

Even these Field Bakeries do not escape the thrill 
of actual war. In the Dardanelles campaign the 
bakers were as much exposed to fire as the fighting 
men. At Hellas a bakery was established on the 
Peninsula and was maintained within four miles of 
the Turkish lines during the whole period of occupa- 
tion. All the Base Supply Depots are not under cover. 
The principal Base on the Northern Line, where in 
one day I saw 40,000 tons of oats and 32,000 tons of 
hay, is an outdoor town and where you can wander 
through acres of supplies. Here the oats are conveyed 
by suction from the holds of the ships into sacks, which 
are stacked up to a height of sometimes a hundred feet. 
They are protected from the weather by tarpaulins. 



62 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

In order to prevent spontaneous combustion among 
the huge mountains of hay the temperature of the 
stacks is taken regularly, with thermometers fastened 
to the ends of long poles. These thermometers are 
stuck into the heart of the pile every two weeks. 

At the Base Supply Depots on the Northern Line 
the Officer Commanding is an Assistant Director of 
Supply, because these Bases and their Advanced 
Bases are practically located in the same place. Their 
Regulating Stations are also close at hand, because 
the armies they feed are much nearer to their source 
of supply than those fed by the Southern Lines, 
where the Base and Advanced Depot are miles apart. 

We now turn from the Wholesale Branch of the 
Business of War as represented by the Base Supply 
Depot to the Retail End, which is the Detail Issue 
Store, Here is where the Army becomes a shopkeeper 
and runs a miniature Department Store. 

The Detail Issue Store is the place where the food 
for troops not at the Army Front is given out. This 
means that it supplies the whole Army Service Corps, 
the troops at the Rest Camps, where the drafts from 
England remain for a brief interval before going to 
the front, Labour Battalions, Prisoners of War, the 
Woman's Auxihary Army Corps and any other persons 
employed on the Lines of Communication. These 
Stores are always attached to the Base or the Advanced 
Supply Depots. They are literally what the word 
implies — a Store, with counters, shelves for goods, bins 
for vegetables and a fresh meat department, presided 
over by men who were butchers in civil hfe. The 
establishments have regular hours for doing business, 
the usual time of issue being during the forenoon, 
when the men from the unit's quartermaster detail 
come with their sacks if a small force is to be fed, 
or motor-trucks if the camp is large, for supplies for 
the next day. 

Let us see how this works. Assume that one 
hundred men of the Army Service Corps attached to 



FROM SHIP TO TRENCH 63 

a Base Depot need food for Wednesday. A Corporal 
and a detail of privates come the day before in a 
motor-truck to the Detail Issue Store with what is 
called an Indent for Rations. This is a printed form 
(used throughout the British Armies) constituting a 
formal Demand for supplies. It contains the name 
of the unit, its location, the number of rations required, 
the specific list of troops, officers and men to be fed, 
the kind of animals employed, the fuel and light 
required and rum and tobacco needed. 

The Corporal hands the Indent to the Chief Issuing 
Clerk, who details one or more men, as the quantity 
requires, to assemble the suppHes. The Indent for 
Rations is issued in duphcate. One of these is signed 
by the Issuing Clerk, and is returned to the unit as 
a voucher. The other, signed by the receiving soldier, 
becomes the Store's memorandum of issue. 

Where the unit to be supplied is very large the 
Indent is handed in the day before, and the suppUes 
assembled during the afternoon. When the Corporal 
and his detail come the next morning he merely gives 
the name of the unit and everything is ready for 
him. 

These Detail Issue Stores vary in size and scope. 
Some only issue to fifty men, while others carry 
rations for sixty thousand. One detail in connection 
with them is of unique interest. .Since all the stores 
carry rum in stock, it is necessary to protect it from 
the ever-present thirst of the soldier. The cases of 
rum are never marked with the name of their real 
contents. They are stamped with a secret mark, 
which is changed from time to time and only known 
to the officers and sergeants in charge. 

We are ready to start on the first lap of the journey 
of the food to the front. Our objective point is the 
Advanced Base Supply Depot. Behind us at the 
Base ports we have left the din of the docks, the 
bustle of unloading, the spectacle of the busy hangar 
— the whole humming round of packing and unpacking. 



64 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

As we go forward into the Domain of Distribution we 
find that with army supplies life is just one repacking 
after another. But every cycle of it has such a 
definite place in a definite system that no time or 
labour is lost. 

An Advanced Base Supply Depot is the place where 
the bulk trains are unloaded and the freight reloaded 
into sectional trains that then go on to the front to 
supply the armies in action. The unit of supply for 
distribution to the front is a Division, which, at full 
strength, is 20,000 men and 5800 horses. This is 
why the train that goes up to the fighting fine is 
called the Standard Divisional Pack Train. Each train 
carries enough food to supply two complete Divisions 
for a day. 

The average number of trains loaded daily at an 
Advanced Depot is twenty-one, which means that the 
normal establishment sends up food every twenty- 
four hours for 840,000 men. During the temporary 
breakdown of one of the northern ports a certain 
Advanced Base Supply Depot had to take over the 
work of another similar station, and for two months 
it fed 1,300,000 men every day. 

You cannot explain the work of an Advanced Base 
Supply Depot, however, without also explaining the 
functions of a Regulating Station. These two establish- 
ments are af&nities. One is absolutely necessary to 
the other. The reason is that the Divisional Pack 
Trains are only made up in part at the Advanced 
Base Supply Depots, where the groceries are packed 
and completed at the Regulating Station, where, as 
you have already seen, the bulk petrol, forage, fuel 
and meat trains arrive direct from the Base Supply 
Depot. Each bulk train contributes its quota to the 
Divisional Pack Trains. When the latter leaves the 
Regulating Station it has its full authorized quantity 
of supplies for the two Divisions it feeds. This means 
that it carries food of all kinds, including meat, fuel, 
forage, petrol, medical comforts, small ordnance stores, 



FROM SHIP TO TRENCH 65 

disinfectants and a postal car, because letters are 
almost as welcome as things to eat. 

The moment you touch the trains you encounter 
another one of the compact organizations whose work 
helps to make up the sum total of army supply in 
France. Without adequate steam transportation 
facilities nothing could be accomplished. The British 
have had to take over, reorganize and regalvanize 
the whole railway system of Northern France. All 
operations are under the control of a Director-General 
of Transportation, General W. A. Nash, a seasoned 
railroad man, who has under him an army of trained 
railroad men from all parts of the Empire. This 
organization was literally put on the map by that 
remarkable individual, Sir Eric Geddes, who has 
become England's Handy-Man for all jobs, and who 
is now First Lord of the Admiralty. 

From a chateau from " G.H.Q." General Nash runs 
the trains from Base to Railhead. All the lines are 
subject to army control. It is just as if the New 
York Central, the Pennsylvania, the Reading, the 
Baltimore and Ohio, the Erie and the New York, New 
Haven and Hartford had all been mobilized for army 
work, and were under the direction of the War Depart- 
ment at Washington. In order to haul the immense 
quantity of supplies hundreds of engines have been 
brought over from England and Canada. They are 
all marked R.O.D., which means Railroad Operating 
Department. Thousands of freight cars have been 
commandeered from every line in England. They 
are stamped " W.D.," which means War Department, 
and also show a white arrow, which is the sjnnbol 
throughout the War Zone of that mighty organization. 

Some notion of the scope of army railway operations . 
in France is obtained when I say that the average 
daily number of trains operated is 220 and that the 
number of loaded cars conveyed each week is 35,000. 
These are standard gauge trains. The British Govern- 
ment also operates hundreds of miles of so-called light 

5 



66 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

or narrow-gauge railways, which often run almost 
up to the trenches. They carry food, ammunition, 
engineers' stores, broken stone and other material 
for road-making, and trench supports, both wood and 
iron. 

The system in operation at an Advanced Base 
Supply Depot is a model of time and labour saving. 
All goods are loaded and unloaded on what we would 
call a freight shed, flanked by railway tracks. The 
incoming bulk train stops on the track outside the 
shed and its groceries are loaded on to the platform, 
where each kind of commodity has a section or block, 
which is numbered. Each block holds thirty days' 
supply of that particular commodity for one Division. 
Let us say that Sugar Block, for example, is number Six. 
All trucks loaded with sugar, therefore, are stopped 
opposite this Block. 

On the other side of the platform are the empty 
freight cars of the Divisional Pack Train. Its sugar 
truck is put alongside Block Six. Thus only two 
operations are required to unload the sugar from 
the bulk train and get it into the sugar truck of the 
Divisional Pack Train. The same is followed with 
all commodities. 

Perishable supplies are kept in the shed. Just 
beyond the tracks where the Divisional Train unloads 
is a huge open platform where non-perishable goods, 
like canned goods, are kept. This is unloaded in bulk 
and piled up in numbered Blocks. The performance 
at the shed is repeated here ; that is, cars are matched 
to Blocks. It would be difficult to find anywhere a 
system simpler than the one I have here tried to explain. 

Each train has a Loading Officer, who gets each 
morning a long form filled out with the necessary 
articles to be packed. After the train is loaded he 
signs the form, which is checked in turn by a Checking 
Officer, and it becomes part of the permanent record 
of the transaction. At the Advanced Base Supply 
Depot each Division supplied gets a number. If a 



FROM SHIP TO TRENCH 67 

train steams out with 83 on its trucks it means that 
this is the number of the Division whose food it carries. 
When it gets to the Regulating Station a corre- 
sponding group of freight cars bearing this same number 
are switched on behind, and the Divisional Pack 
Train, now complete, goes up the line to Railhead. 

With this Divisional Pack Train goes a series of 
Waybills. One of these is signed by the Railhead 
Supply Officer, who sends it back to the Advanced 
Base Supply Depot as a receipt for the goods. Another 
duplicate is kept by him for his stock records. Still a 
third remains behind at the Depot. 

Go to a Regulating Station — it may be five or 
thirty miles from the Advanced Base Supply Depot 
— and you will find 3^ourself in a maze of ceaseless 
traffic. Day and night scores of trains come and 
go, hauled by nervous puffy engines. On the net- 
work of tracks — called the Triage — everything seems 
to be in confusion, but, as a matter of fact, it is all 
part of a perfectly attuned system. At every Regu- 
lating Station the Traffic Manager sits at his desk 
with a huge blackboard before him, on which every 
incoming and outgoing train is marked. Although 
he may wear the uniform of a captain or major, it is 
purely a temporary rank. Before the war he was an 
operating official on the London and North- Western 
or the North-Eastern or some other great English 
railway. He knows his job. 

At these stations trains are literally regulated. 
Hence the title. Every Traffic Manager in charge 
keeps what he calls Plus and Minus Books. If an 
extra sugar or tinned meat or gasolene car comes 
up it is registered in the Plus Book. If by any chance 
a sectional Pack Train arrives with a car short it is 
recorded in the Minus Book. What is more important, 
the gap in the train is at once filled, and without delay, 
from the extra loaded cars that are kept on what is 
known as the Surplus Track. 

A complete set of Divisional Pack Trains is handled 



68 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

every twenty-four hours. I mean by this that, 
beginning at sunset each evening, the battalions of 
trains begin to steam away from the Regulation 
Station up to the Railhead, where they are scheduled 
to arrive at dawn. Just as soon as one group of 
these trains leaves the station another instalment 
of bulk and partly-packed trains begins to arrive. 
It is an endless round of traffic. 

No train returns from Railhead empty. It brings 
back clothing, shoes, guns, ammunition and engineer- 
ing stores to be salvaged or renewed. 

When you reach the Railhead you are in the Zone 
of the Armies. You have gone as far as the railway 
dares to go. Indeed, more than one Divisional 
Pack Train has arrived at its destination to be met 
by an avalanche of shells and smashed to bits. From 
this time on you are up against danger and death ; 
the whole system of subsistence is exposed to a 
hundred hazards. 

Yet despite every difficulty that besets the Lines 
of Food Communication the accounting and super- 
vision go right on. The Railhead Supply Officer 
keeps a Daily Stock Sheet, upon which he enters 
the supplies he receives from the Divisional Pack 
Trains, and deducts the Issues that he makes. 

The Railhead may be the shattered railway station 
of a ruined French town or an improvised open-air 
freight yard. The steel rail follows the advancing 
armies. What was the scene of a bloody battle 
one month may be an important railway distributing 
point the next. 

At the Railhead a Reserve is kept on hand to meet 
emergencies. Wherever you go in the whole scheme 
of British supply you find the Reserve, which is the 
bulwark against breakdown in transport. This Rail- 
head Reserve is renewed every month because some 
of the goods are likely to spoil. Itjis kept imder 
canvas, which is heavily camouflaged. 

The active supplies which arrive every morning are 



FROM SHIP TO TRENCH 69 

loaded into squadrons of motor- trucks, technically 
called the Divisional Supply Column, which hauls the 
supplies to the Refilling Point = Now you encounter 
Mechanical Transport for the first time as an active 
accessory of the Armies of the field, frequently it 
must do all its work at night, because it is often the 
target of the long-range German guns and the aero- 
plane. 

The Refilling Point marks the last stage of Mechanical 
Transport. As the danger becomes greater and you 
get nearer to the fighting the means of food convey- 
ance must adapt themselves to the perils of the situa- 
tion. The roads are now so bad that even if there 
were no shells flying about a three-ton motor-truck 
could never get through. The army prop becomes the 
horse and the mule. Henceforth, and up to the time 
the food is actually dehvered to the fighting units, it 
is conveyed by the Divisional Train which is Horse 
Transport. A Divisional Train consists of 4455 men, 
375 animals and 198 wagons. 

With the Horse Transport you get the really spec- 
tacular contact with the firing line. Day and night it 
is almost constantly under fire. A German gunner 
would rather "pot" a food column than a trench, 
because it works a greater hardship. I have seen the 
roads strewn with the debris of wrecked Supply wagons 
and black with the bodies of dead horses. P*lore than 
200,000 horses have been killed in France alone since 
the war began. Most of them were in the Transport, 
because very Httle cavalry has been employed. 

At the unit, which is usually a battalion, the food 
is unloaded from the wagons and taken in charge by 
the Battalion Quartermaster, who divides it into five 
lots, one for Headquarters and one for each of the 
four companies. In the company the Quartermaster- 
Sergeant puts it up in sacks and gives it to carrying 
parties, who convey it to the trenches. 

The manner of cooking depends upon the stage of 
fighting. The food is sometimes cooked behind the 



70 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

lines and carried up at night by hand in " dixies " 
or large food-containers. It may be cooked in the 
Communication Trench or in the Front Trench itself. 
The main essential is that the Horse Transport delivers 
the suppUes to the Battalion and the unit must do 
the rest as the circumstance of war dictates. 

I made a journe}?^ last autumn from a Railhead 
to the trenches. It was in the historic valley that 
British valour has glorified into one of the supreme 
and spectacular spots of the war, where half a|dozen 
Gettysburgs have been fought and won since Haig 
began his victorious onward sweep. On either side 
flowed the rivers that will have imperishable names, for 
the Ancre and the Somme are part of the agony and 
sacrifice of the great struggle. 

Six months before I had seen that same region white 
with snow, yet blazing with death. Two mighty 
armies were locked in a terrific struggle. The hill-sides 
were gashed with trenches, the roads blocked with 
ammunition convoys. Everything was dedicated to 
destruction. 

When I went back the British advance had left this 
one-time battleground far behind. Where the big 
guns had roared was now a Refilling Point. Not many 
miles to the rear in the little city that vies with Ypres 
as the theatre of heroic endeavour a Railhead had 
been established in the wrecked railway station. 
Motor-trucks were lined up at the platform for their 
daily supplies, mountains of forage towered in the 
public square, now a mass of wreckage ; in the ruins 
of the houses where once the citizens smoked and 
lived their uneventful lives Royal Engineers were 
rearing stables to protect the supply of horses from 
the rigours of the winter so near at hand. A Com- 
munity of Supply had suddenly sprung up amid a 
wanton waste. There was still a suggestion of close 
proximity to war in the boom of the far-away guns, 
but that was all. 

The valley beyond was a flower garden. The 



FROM SHIP TO TRENCH 71 

furrowed hill-sidesf|blazed with poppies ; the shell 
holes were rippling pools of yellow mustard plant. 
Nature had " come back," Only the men sleeping in 
the graves by the road-side would never return. 

To return to practical details, the question that the 
average man would ask at this point is : How does 
the Advanced Base Supply Depot or the Railhead 
Supply Officer or the Refilling Point Officer know just 
how much food and fuel to carry ? With shells 
shrieking all over the place an excess supply would 
invite unecenssary loss. Again, no chances can be 
taken in underestimating the needs of the men fighting 
for their lives. 

|||You have only to look a little further into the supply 
system to see how it is done. Every one of the five 
British Armies in the field has a Deputy Assistant 
Quartermaster-General and a Deputy Director of 
Supply and Transport. The latter is the link between 
the Demands of the army on the one hand and the 
Source of Supply on the other. 

A battalion up front makes its Demands for supplies 
on the Brigade Supply Officer, who in turn " Demands," 
as the phrase goes, on the Senior Supply Officer, who 
is the Supply Ofiicer of the Division. He renders a 
Consolidated Demand on the Railhead Supply Officer. 
If the Division is recruited to full strength it means 
that he wants daily supplies for 20,000 men and 
5000 horses. 

The Railhead Supply Officer thereupon issues in 
accordance with this request from the stores he receives 
each day from the Divisional Pack Train. He sends 
a " Daily Wire of Feeding Strength and Reserve " 
to the Deputy Director of Transport with the army, 
who makes a formal Demand for all the supplies needed 
on the Advanced Base Supply Depot. In other words, 
the battalion in the trenches ultimately clears its needs 
through the Headquarters of the army to which it is 
attached. 

What happens when Divisions change ? Brigades 



72 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

are being constantly shifted from service in the 
trenches to Rest Camps in the rear. They usually 
come down very much depleted in ranks, and do not 
require as much food as the fresh brigade that has 
just gone up to relieve them. It is up to the Senior 
Supply Officer immediately to acquaint the Deputy 
Director of Supply and Transport with the change, so 
that it can be noted in the issue of supplies. 

Let us assume that the Division has lost 10,000 
men, and that its Transport is all shot to pieces, having 
lost 2800 animals. This means that it goes back to 
rest with 10,000 men and 3000 animals. 

The Senior Supply Officer simply wires : "X 
Division feeding strength, men ten thousand, animals 
three thousand," and the Advanced Base Supply 
Depot immediately adjusts its Pack Train to meet 
the change in needs. 

A specific report is made on all supplies salvaged or 
captured from the enemy. If these are fit for con- 
sumption they are used up at once, and the units 
consuming them underdraw on their supplies from 
the Base. 

Every possible precaution is taken against food 
disaster. There is always five days' reserve for each 
Division at Railhead and a reserve at the Horse 
Reserve Park, where the extra Horse Transport is kept 
to renew horses. These reserves, together with the 
Iron Rations of the men, constitute a sufficient safe- 
guard against a breakdown in train service v/hich, at 
the worst, would not last more than three or four days. 

Now you can see why Tommy never misses a meal. 

For the last I have kept the chapter in the story of 
Army Supply, which from the point of view of American 
business is more important perhaps than any other. 
It concerns the check on waste, which extends well up 
into the fighting area. Aside from the fact that it 
saves the British Government millions of dollars every 
year, it points the way to a tremendous conservation 
of financial and material resources in connection with 



FROM SHIP TO TRENCH 73 

our own military operations abroad. It has a world- 
wide significance, because it touches the two universal 
institutions — human nature and the pocket-book. 

During a great war, and while the nation is thrilled 
and touched by the news of the front, no one questions 
the cost. Everybody has some kind of stake in the 
struggle. But when the war is over, and the fixed 
charges on glory in the shape of taxes and other 
demands must be met with irritating and costly 
regularity, the unpatriotic and unromantic question 
arises : " Where did all that money go ? " 

Scandal lifts its fearsome head. Boards of Inquiry 
become the habit, and good names are besmirched. It 
is not war that constitutes the graveyard of reputation, 
but the investigation that comes afterwards. 

The British Army is taking no chances on becoming 
the target for the scandalmonger when peace sheathes 
the sword. A remarkable system of auditing and 
accounting has been in operation from the first day of 
war that will show the British taxpayer just where 
every penny of his money has gone. It applies every 
possible antidote to extravagance. As with Corpora- 
tions, the greatest of these is Publicity. 

There are two separate and distinct curbs on army 
waste. One operates under the supervision of the 
Financial Adviser of the War Office, who must render 
an accounting to Parliament for all war expenditures, 
and who has a complete working organization in the 
field which deals entirely with finance. The other is 
the Investigation Department under the control of the 
Director of Supply at General Headquarters, which 
follows up all supplies and sees that the issue of food 
does not exceed actual consumption. 

Take the Financial Supervision first. In a building 
in a certain French tov/n not a great distance behind 
the lines is a complete Financial Bureau in charge of a 
Major- General, who before the war was at the head of 
a great business. The record of every dollar that the 
army spends in France (and there is a very large field 



74 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

expenditure) goes through his office. The voucher 
for each ton of biscuits that lands in Fraace must 
pass his scrutiny and show that the food is either in 
stock or eaten. 

Every day — as General Pershing has already learned 
to his cost — some sort of claim is made by the French 
for damages. If a pig is run over by a motor-truck 
the peasant immediately sends in a claim for a thousand 
francs. The usual French claim of this kind ranges 
from ten to twenty times the real value of the damaged 
goods. Every pig destroyed, according to the owner, 
could do everything but talk. All these claims must 
be investigated and paid. Likewise the immense bills 
for billeting must be audited. 

Everything is investigated. If an officer's car is 
smashed up, a Board of Inquiry sits|on the case to 
find out if the accident was due to carelessness or the 
natural hazards of congested road traffic in the war 
zone. If it is proved that the accident was due to 
carelessness, the officer is required to pay the damages ; 
if it was unavoidable it is " Written off " and marked, 
"To be borne by the public," which means that John 
Bull foots the bill. 

These Boards of Inquiry, which are composed of 
officers, deal with an immense variety of emergencies. 
It may be a leakage of gasolene due to rough handling 
or defective packing ; an unvouchered expenditure 
by a Purchasing Agent ; the loss of horse blankets in 
transit from the Ordnance Base Depot in France to 
the Advanced Horse Transport Depot, or the destruc- 
tion of Ordnance stores due to fire. Witnesses are 
examined, a complete report is made in each case and 
responsibility fixed. 

As soon as it was evident that stationary or trench 
warfare was likely to continue in France for a long 
time, it became necessary for the British Army to 
purchase as much food and forage in France|^as possible. 
For r one thing it saves tonnage from England and 
elsewhere. A Central Purchasing Board was estab- 



FROM SHIP TO TRENCH 75 

lished by the Financial Department to deal with the 
field buying which is made by officers, known as 
Requisitioning Officers, who are attached to each 
brigade. If these Officers were permitted to buy 
indiscriminately the competition between them would 
immediately raise the prices of all commodities. To 
prevent this there is a separate Pin-chasing Board 
with each army. Each Board gets a regular schedule 
of prices to be paid — it is changed from time to time 
to meet market conditions — and if the French farmer 
or shopkeeper does not accept them the goods are 
ordered from home. This is the guarantee against 
gouging. 

The whole operation of this Financial Department 
in the field goes to show that although Great Britain 
spends $35,000,000 a day on the war a suspicious 
item of five dollars is rigidly scrutinized. The Watch- 
Dog of the British Treasury is always on the job. 

But this censorship of expenditure is merely the 
beginning of real supply auditing which constitutes 
the principal work of the Investigation Department. 
Here you have the branch of the Business of War 
which corresponds with the Accounting Department 
of a business. Its headquarters — located at a bustling 
French town where an immense number of British 
supply trains are regulated every day — are just like 
the offices of a large firm of expert accountants. The 
duties are almost the same. The only difference is 
that the men of the " I.D." — as the Investigation 
end is known- -wear uniforms, are subject to military 
discipline and deal with the biggest business in the 
world. Most of these officers, I might add, were 
actuaries, accountants and book-keepers in civil hfe. 
At their head is a regular officer, Colonel C. M. Ryan, 
a Deputy Director of Supply, who, without the slightest 
previous business experience, runs the whole show 
just as if he had been trained in trade. 

The Investigation! Department was started in De- 
cember 1914. Originally its operations were confined 



76 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

to the Base and Advanced Supply Depots, It had, 
and still has, a representative at every Base Depot 
who checks up the receipts and issues of supplies and 
acts as Auditing Officer. Losses of supplies from 
theft, over-issue or on the road have to be accounted 
for. A monthly stock-taking was enforced and every 
discrepancy thoroughly investigated. This strict 
supervision not only means a large financial saving, 
but is of distinct military value, because it compels 
all the Depots to keep their stocks shipshape. 

In view of the large number of supply trains that 
shunt back and forth every daj;' it is natural that 
freight cars should be lost. All these are traced by 
the Investigating Department. During last July 
199 loaded trucks, lost in transit, were run down and 
their freight restored. 

During the summer of 1915 General Carter said 
to himself, " Why not extend the operations of the 
Investigation Department into the army areas ? An 
immense amount of supplies in the field of fighting 
is practically unaccounted for. There is not the 
shghtest reason why supervision should not extend 
to the field kitchen." 

Up to this time the general principle laid down by 
the War Office was that there should be no accounting 
for supplies after they left the Advanced Supply Depot. 
Demands for food were made on scraps of paper and 
the rudest sort of Indents, while the certificate of 
Issue and Receipt was often scribbled on the back. 
Naturally there was great waste. 

General Carter's suggestion was adopted by the 
Quartermaster-General to all the Forces, and an 
Administrative Control was estabHshed which hterally 
represents the last word in Supply Supervision, 
because it follows the goods up to the point of con- 
sumption. 

Forms were standardized and the whole system 
of " Demanding " by troops at the front, which I 
have described earlier in this chapter, was put into 



FROM SHIP TO TRENCH 77 

effect. The haphazard methods disappeared, and the 
whole process put on a definite business basis. 

Over all this unending procession of Supply the 
Investigation Department keeps vigilant watch. It 
gets a duplicate of every Indent for Rations — 55,000 
of these come in each week alone — a copy of every 
receipt for supplies delivered and a carbon of each 
Waybill used throughout the traffic system. Into 
its office pours a flood of documents that record every 
transaction that relates to the issue of food to the 
British Armies in France. 

The main job, therefore, of the Investigation De- 
partment is to reconcile Issue with Receipt. Each 
commodity issued must register 100 per cent, which 
means that every pound of it must be consumed or 
be in a Reserve. If there is a serious discrepancy 
the officers responsible are likely to be severely dis- 
cipUned. 

So automatic has become the working of demand 
and supply that during the month that I fepent with 
the British Armies the Reconciliation Percentage 
of twenty-three leading commodities did not vary 
more than i per cent, in surplus or in shortage. In 
practically every case it was considerably less than 
I per cent. Over-issue, which always means waste, is 
eliminated. 

Thus the Business of War is more than a phrase. 
It is as efficient as it is destructive. 



; V 

THE MIRACLE OF TRANSPORT 

WHEN the real story of the Great War is 
written the technical experts will probably 
call it a War of Artillery, but the men who 
have had to battle with the business of it 
will always know it as the War of Mechanical Transport. 
The whole marvellous Empire of the Motor has pro- 
duced no greater miracle than the achievement of the 
gasolene-propelled vehicle which has made possible 
the feeding and purveying of the enormous fighting 
hosts. Indeed, Supply and Transport are so closely 
related that one cannot exist without the other. They 
are the real affinities of the service. 

Since an historic evening early in September 1914, 
when General Gaheni's reserve army swept out of Paris 
in taxi-cabs, joined Joff re's forces, helped to deliver the 
crucial blow that blocked the Germans at the Mame 
and saved the capital, the automobile has been a con- 
stantly increasing factor in the waging of the war. In 
this particular case it provided the pivot on which the 
whole AUied Cause turned. If Paris had fallen then 
before Kluck's drive no man knows what might have 
happened. The abused taxi earned its crown of glory 
that night. 

No phase of the British Anny organization in the 
field is of such vital significance to the United States as 
Mechanical Transport. Here you get the direct Hnk 
with America, because thousands of our cars of all 

kinds are in constant use in the War Zone. But more 

78 



THE MIRACLE OF TRANSPORT 79 

important than this is the tremendous lesson in stan- 
dardization, both as to vehicles and their parts, that has 
been learned by the British after three years of costly 
and drastic experience. By heeding this lesson we can 
save milhons of dollars, to say nothing of infinite 
trouble. Simple and standardized Mechanical Trans- 
port is half the battle, because it not only means ade- 
quate food supply, but also guns, ammunition, aero- 
planes and engineers' stores. 

Under the terrific pressure of army needs the utili- 
tarian side of the motor, from cycle to five-ton truck, 
has been reorganized and given a rebirth of efficiency. 
Three years of war have advanced the industry more 
than ten years of peaceful investigation. The results 
are of almost incalculable benefit to the entire business. 
They furnish one of the many stimulating examples of 
regeneration wrought out of monster destruction. 

Like the army it serves, British Mechanical Trans- 
port has developed from almost nothing into a mighty 
machine. Prior to this war the motor-truck, as a 
practical aid to operations in the field, did not loom 
very large in the mobilization plans. In the Boer War 
all the transport was drawn by horses, mules or oxen. 
In 1910 a few steam-propeUed trucks were introduced 
as experiments, but they were rather impracticable on 
account of their weight, slow speed and the inevitable 
difficulty of fuel supply in actual war. The Mechanical 
Transport was controlled by the Transport Branch of 
the War Office and consisted of a very small personnel 
and an equally limited number of vehicles. The War 
Office relied for the provision of motor transport, in the 
event of the mobihzation of an Expeditionary Force, 
on trucks already in use in civil work whose owners had 
been subsidized and who were, therefore, bound to turn 
over their equipment at the outbreak of war. For the 
expansion of the personnel this plan depended upon 
the direct commissioning of experienced civilians for 
officers and the immediate enUstment of civilian 
drivers. No provision was made for training men in 



8o THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

discipline or military routine. Such was practically 
the main Mechanical Transport resource of the British 
Army before the war began. 

Under this scheme the mobilization of motor units 
was entrusted to the Commanding Officers of the 
various ports of embarkation. These officers were 
provided with lists of the vehicles which were to 
mobilize at their depots. The owners of these vehicles 
were instructed by telegraph just where their trucks 
and cars would be required. For the provision of 
spare parts a system of subsidy, similar to that in 
vogue for the supply of complete vehicles, existed. 
Efforts were made to encourage manufacturers to 
standardize parts and fittings to as great an extent as 
possible. 

When the war crashed into civihzation this arrange- 
ment was not found entirely wanting. The trucks 
that first supplied Lord French's army were taken from 
trade. They went from shop, warehouse and factory 
to flat cars, were hauled to the southern ports and 
rushed to France. These scattered and impressed 
vehicles formed the nucleus of the immense fleet of 
transport comprising thousands of trucks, cars and 
motor-cycles — 50,000,000 pounds of equipment on 
rubber tires — that to-day makes up the Mechanical 
Transport of the British Armies in France alone. The 
transport in the other theatres of war augments this 
list considerably. 

As a matter of picturesque fact, however, the British 
Mechanical Transport in France on any kind of scale 
really began with that lumbering engine of peace, 
the London omnibus. At the outbreak of hostilities 
thousands of them were literally taken from the Strand, 
Piccadilly and other streets of the Metropolis and 
shunted into the war area. They were used to convey 
the " Old Contemptibles," as the first immortal army 
that dashed to the relief of Belgium was called. 

In connection with their advent in France occurred 
one of the most amusing incidents of the war. Since 



THE MIRACLE OF TRANSPORT 8i 

these buses were rushed from the highways of peace 
into the Zone of War they appeared on the French 
roads carrying ail the advertising that had become 
familiar to the London population. The virtues of 
soaps, matches and safety razors were still extolled on 
their sides. At that time " Potash and Perlmutter," 
rendered into a play, was having its first big run at a 
well-known London theatre. Nearly every London 
bus carried a huge sign which read : " See ' Potash 
and Perlmutter ' at the Queen's Theatre." 

This injunction in huge letters burst upon the un- 
suspecting people of prance. When the first line of 
buses filled with British Tommies svvept up the road 
to Mons the French soldiers and civilians stood at 
attention on the road-side and yelled : 

" Vivent les Generals Potash et Perlmutter ! " 

They thought that the names of the famous Jewish 
merchants were those of the British Generals in 
command of the Expeditionary Force. 

Soon after the outbreak of the war Mechanical 
Transport, or " M.T.," as it is known in the service, 
was detached from the Transport Branch of the War 
Office, entrusted to a separate branch of the Quarter- 
master-General's staff and mated to the Department 
of Supply. This is why Major-General A. R. Crofton 
Atkins is Director of Supply and Transport in the 
War Office organization that feeds and provides the 
British Armies everywhere. 

W^ith Mechanical Transport as with Supplj^ you 
find a close-knit system that is full brother to the 
whole process of provision that I have already ex- 
plained. It is just one more Branch of the stupendous 
Business of War, organized, sustained and operated on 
lines that would do credit to the most scientific of 
industrial institutions. 

Your knowledge of the institution of Supply now 

enables you to grasp at once the scope of the complete 

Mechanical Transport service. In England you find 

a perfect system of provision based on actual needs 

6 



82 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

expressed in Demands sent in from France and the 
other war areas. In the field you encounter an inter- 
locking chain of Base and Advanced Depots ; you 
see an unfailing process of Supply ; you behold a 
Field Repair service that carries the work of main- 
tenance and reconstruction almost up to the firing 
line ; you marvel at the ceaseless flow of gasolene, 
and you reahze that the whole world of rubber has 
been drained for the millions of tires required. 

Again you have the parallel with trade, because this 
whole gasolene-driven enterprise is operated just as if 
it were the annexe of a private business that must be 
conducted at maximum productivity and with the 
minimum overhead cost. 

At the head of this business is Major-General 
W. G. B. Boyce, Director of Transport of the British 
Armies in France, who sits at his desk at General 
Headquarters with his hand at the wheel of all 
Mechanical Transport in that field. Every day he 
knows just the number of trucks and cars that are 
in active service and their exact condition ; how 
many have been destroyed by enemy fire or accident 
the day before ; the exact state of all motor supply 
at all Depots, and what new vehicles are on their 
way to replenish the lost or damaged. In brief, the 
whole Mechanical Transport situation, through the 
agency of an almost infallible chain of intelligence, 
is at his finger-ends. In war knowledge is always 
power. 

General Boyce is a fine type of the clear-cut efficiency 
that you invariably discover in the high executive 
British Army places. Without technical knowledge 
of motors — I doubt if he knows how to run a car — 
he can detect the slightest deviation in the structure 
of the very technical organization that he controls. 
It is instinct. One of his colleagues said : " Boyce 
can smell out mistakes." I am quite sure that he 
could take charge of any huge motor-plant in the 
United States and operate it successfully. Like his 




CofyrigJit Pholooraph by J. Russell &■ Sons 



MAJOR-GENERAL \V. G. B. BOYCE 
DIRECTOR OF TRANSPORT OF THE BRITISH ARMIES IN FRANCE 



THE MIRACLE OF TRANSPORT 83 

stalwart colleague, General E. E. Carter, who rules 
the Domain of Supply, he is a graduate and 
member in good standing of the Armj;^ Service Corps 
— a conspicuous figure in the Army behind the 
Army. 

At the outset it might be well to impress the fact 
that Mechanical Transport in a great army to-day is 
much more than motor-trucks and automobiles. It 
includes all ambulances not hauled by horses, motor- 
cycles, the equipment of the tanks and the huge 
so-called Four-Wheel Drives which pull the big guns. 
These Drives are the monster limbers or tractors with 
caterpillar wheels. In the case of 9"2 howitzers, 
12-inch guns and larger cahbres they are hke travelling 
machine-shops. All cannon from 6-inch howitzers 
up come under the head of siege artillery and must 
be hauled by mechanical transport. Without motors 
they could not be used in the field. Now you can see 
why the gasolene engine has made the War of Artillery 
possible. 

Mechanical Transport also inchides aU the water 
wagons, which are as important to the sustenance as 
the food columns. Then, too, there is the tremendous 
task of providing spare parts, accessories and tires for 
all the different kinds of vehicles. Last, but not 
least, of Mechanical Transport responsibiUties is the 
maintenance of a continuous supply of the very life- 
blood of all motor transport, which is gasolene, or 
petrol, as the British call it. The only section of 
gasolene transport not under General Boyce is the 
equipment of the Royal Fl3dng Corps. This is 
because the aviation lorries, which is the English 
synon5nTi for trucks, must be of special construction 
in order to carry complete aeroplanes. 

All vehicles, their parts and accessories, must be 
provided from hundreds of factories in Great Britain 
and the United States, mobiHzed and manned in 
England, conveyed to France and other areas of war 
and kept going day and night behind the Unes and 



84 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

under fire. Like the organization of the Army Food 
Supply, it seems like an almost impossible proposition, 
but it is all reduced to charts and diagrams, vitalized 
by an amazing administrative genius and made into 
an agency whose operation is as simple as it is 
efficient. 

On a chart about three feet square, which hangs on 
the wall in General Boyce's Office at General Head- 
quarters, is a lay-out of the whole system from factory 
to field. At the bottom is Production, which may be 
factories in the United States or England. Next in 
succession come the Home Depots in England, where 
the mobilization of transport, drivers and mechanics 
is effected. Beyond this lies France, where you go 
from the Base Mechanical Transport Depots to the 
Advanced Mechanical Transport Depots, past the 
Heavy Repair Shops and Tire Presses, up to the Mobile 
Work Shops in the field where the cars damaged by 
shell fire or wrecked on the roads in the zone of the 
armies come for repair. 

Everything on this chart is so comprehensive that 
it is like a tale told in words of one syllable. The 
English Depots are all in yellow, the Depots and shops 
on the Lines of Communication are blue, while the 
stations in the field are pink. On one side is a succes- 
sion of compact texts which explains the functions of 
every stage in the system. You can look at this chart 
and see at a glance just how the whole organization 
of Mechanical Transport lives and has its being. With 
this bird's-eye view of operation in your mind you can 
now go into specific details. 

Let us first examine the Production End as it 
affects men and motors. The rank and file of 
Mechanical Transport must, of necessity, be more 
skilled than any other branch of the Army Service 
Corps, from which its entire personnel is drawn. All 
men who enter the army and who have had previous 
experience as chauffeurs are mobilized at once as 
drivers. But the number of trained volunteers and 



THE MIRACLE OF TRANSPORT 85 

conscripts is unequal to the enormous demands of 
the Army Transport Service. 

Two huge Mechanical Transport Depots had to be 
established in England. At one of them the men are 
examined as to their qualifications. If a man says 
that he knows how to drive a truck he is immediately 
put on the seat of a five-ton lorry and made to prove 
that he can deliver the goods. At the first of these 
Depots the men are cross-examined, weeded out and 
equipped. They then proceed to the Training Depot, 
where the experienced chauffeur is put through the 
paces with every form of army vehicle from truck to 
Four- Wheel Drive. The green driver gets a complete 
course of technical instruction. No one is permitted 
to leave the Depot to serve as driver in the field until 
he can manage the biggest truck on a crowded road in 
the darkest night and can repair his engine under all 
sorts of disquieting conditions. 

The faculty in this Automobile College is composed 
of temporary officers who have been employed in the 
great automobile factories of England and also hundreds 
of men from the technical staff of the London General 
Omnibus Company. Recruits who are unsuitable as 
motor drivers become loaders and packers and remain 
in the Army Service Corps. This Automobile School 
becomes the source of man-power for the Mechanical 
Transport. The drain on this man-power is very great, 
because of the constant stream of new vehicles that 
pours from England into France and the steady losses 
in the field. 

Now we can turn to the Vehicle End. Every week 
scores of trucks and cars arrive in England from 
America. Some of the equipment from the United 
States comes in the form of a chassis upon which a 
British body is erected. At the same time every 
automobile factory in the United Kingdom is working 
day and night on army motor output. All these 
vehicles and cars are assembled in what is called a 
Vehicle Pool. Just as soon as Demands for trucks 



86 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

come by wire from France each vehicle is manned 
with a driver and an extra man from the Training 
Depot and sent on its way. 

These two men remain with their truck until they, 
or the truck, are destroyed. Each driver is required 
to keep a Log of his car. Into it he must record the 
amount of fuel he uses, the number of tires and spare 
parts he requisitions — in short, the whole story of 
what his vehicle does. 

Every truck gets what is called a War Department 
number. The chassis also gets a number. These 
two numbers are permanently attached to the car 
and provide the means of identifying it throughout 
the army records. The truck or car and its numbers 
become part of an endless system of observation and 
accounting which continues until the vehicle goes 
into the scrap-heap and is written off the books. Some 
of the lorries used by the First Expeditionary Force 
are still in service, and it is interesting to add that 
they include some well-known American makes. 

The vehicle is only one phase of the Production 
End in England. Near London is an immense spare 
part and tire Depot — the largest in the world. Within 
its walls seven million parts are " turned over " every 
3^ear, yet there is a record of each one. 

How does the Production End know just what 
equipment to provide ? I will now explain. 

Despite the immense scope and variety of the 
Mechanical Transport there is a definite allotment for 
every Branch of the Service. A Battery of 6-inch 
howitzers, for example, is entitled to four Four- Wheel 
Drives and fifteen trucks. It can have no more — no 
less. Eight of these trucks are used for ammunition, 
three for baggage, two for gun platforms, one for 
supplies and one for spare parts. Every one of these 
batteries is charged up with this mechanical equipment 
and must render an accounting. 

The same is true of the trucks of a Divisional Supply 
Column, which hauls the food from Railhead to 



THE MIRACLE OF TRANSPORT 87 

Refilling Point in the field, and the Ammunition Park 
which carries shells. Likewise every Base and Ad- 
vanced Supply Depot has its quota of trucks and must 
maintain it. If this number falls below standard it 
must be renewed at once. 

Hence it is important for the Director of Transport 
to know what is technically called the Supply Situation 
every day. From every unit that uses motors of any 
kind he gets a report at " CH.Q." He therefore 
knows precisely what he has on hand ; what destruc- 
tion has been wrought and what Demands must be 
made upon reserves in France and upon the Vehicle 
Pools in England. 

Take the case of a Big Push, which usually plays 
havoc with Mechanical Transport, A heavy bom- 
bardment may destroy fifty trucks and forty Four- 
Wheel Drives in a single day. A report of this loss 
is wired to the Director of Transport, who replaces 
the lost vehicles from the Reserve Park in the Field, 
He immediately makes a Demand on England for 
enough Transport to fill up the gap in the Park. The 
Reserve Vehicle Park bears the same relation to 
Mechanical Transport that the Authorized Reserve 
bears to Food Provision. It is the bulwark against 
disaster, an automatic insurance against delays and 
breakdowns. Throughout the whole organization of 
Mechanical Transport you find that Supply and 
Ordnance Stores history repeats itself. Nothing is 
permitted to remain a loss. Swift renewal is the 
watchword up and down the line. 

We can now cross to France and see how the whole 
Mechanical Transport Machine works. At once you 
find it linked up with the Supply and Ordnance 
organization, for which it fetches and carries. In 
other words, it is part and parcel of the general pro- 
vision geography of the whole war area. This means 
that the Base Mechanical Transport Depot on the 
Northern Line of Communication is located in the 
chief Supply port of that Line and serves the armies 



88 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

ill the area, while the Southern Base Mechanical 
Transport Depot adjoins the Base Supply Depot of 
the Southern Line and serves the British Armies 
located in its zone. The organization of both Base 
Mechanical Depots is practically the same, but each 
has its distinctive elements of interest. Therefore 
we will visit both. 

The Base Mechanical Transport Depot for the 
Northern Line is of particular concern to the United 
States, because it supplies all the American cars used 
by the British Armies. Go into its huge counting- 
room — it looks precisely like the office of a great 
factory with its clicking typewriters, card indexes, 
ledger accounts, adding machines and other aids to 
business — and you will see on the diagrams that 
hang on the wall the familiar names that have made 
American motor history, and which are now geared 
up to the world automobile machine. It makes the 
Yankee visitor feel that he is back home. 

Typical of the completeness of this Transport 
organization is a large Blueprint which outlines the 
duties of every one of the many sections. If a supply 
clerk is required to make out triplicates of every 
Demand for a spare part that comes in it is indicated 
here. Ever^/body knows what is expected of him. 

At one of these Bases you get a touch of the real 
human interest of the war. You see a crack motor 
designer who earns $15,000 in England making Blue- 
prints for a subaltern's pay. You find an automobile 
production engineer who set his own fees in peace-times 
speeding up the supply output, content with the wage 
of a captain. Here, as elsewhere in the Army Service 
Corps, expert brain as well as brawn is enlisted on the 
army job. 

A Base Mechanical Supply Depot in its work plays 
many parts. It receives all the reinforcements — 
drivers and mechanics — for the field ; it checks all 
the new vehicles that arrive from England ; it has 
a school of instruction which gives the final intensive 



THE MIRACLE OF TRANSPORT 89 

training to slightly deficient chauffeurs, and it is 
the clearing-house for all obsolete or wrecked-beyond- 
repair vehicles. 

But the greatest of its functions is the issuance 
of all spare parts and tires. Now we come to the 
really difficult and complicated problem of all 
Mechanical Transport — the one that is at once its 
bane and its salvation, and the one, I might add, 
which points the greatest of all constructive morals 
for the infant Transport organization of the American 
Army now in the making. 

If you know anything about automobiles you 
know that any motor vehicle, whether it is limousine, 
touring-car or truck, is the sum of a great many so-called 
parts. In the case of one of the best-known American 
motor-trucks used in France there are exactly 1140 
parts. These parts may be as small as a imt or as 
large as an axle. Nearly ever}^ model of car or truck 
has its own particular set of parts or " spares," as 
they are known. It follows, therefore, that very few 
of these parts are interchangeable. You cannot 
renew X car with the spares of Y car. If you are 
dealing with the renewal and upkeep of a great many 
different makes you must provide a separate supply of 
spares for each make of car, and also for every type of 
that make. 

Now, if the British Army only used a few makes 
of cars and a few different types of these makes, the 
renewal of spares would be a very simple business. 
But this, unfortunately, is not the case. England 
went to war almost overnight. As you akeady 
know, she had paid very little attention to the 
organization of her Mechanical Transport. There was 
no standardization ; in fact, no vehicles to standardize. 
The comparatively small group of cars commandeered 
for the First Expeditionary Force represented nearly 
a dozen different manufacturers, each one with his 
own particular set of spare parts. 

War does not wait. The army had to have hundreds 



90 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

of trucks at once. They were gathered in from every 
possible source. America was scoured for them, with 
the result that before six months had passed there 
were more than fifty different makes of car-trucks and 
cars in France, and in many instances half a dozen or 
more types of each make. In the case of one British 
truck extensively used in the army there are exactly 
sixty-seven types, which call for more than four 
thousand different parts. 

Since the organization of one Base Mechanical 
Transport Depot and up to the end of July 1917, 
210,000 items have been Demanded by units in the 
field alone. This does not mean the quantity of parts, 
but the number of items. If a unit Demands six 
pistons for a lorry and four connecting-rods for a 
touring-car the number of items recorded is not ten, 
but two. The number of articles involved therefore 
runs into the millions. 

The colossal task of transport renewal is now ap- 
parent . I could give you no better idea of the immense 
scope of this work than to say that at the Base 
Mechanical Transport Supply Depot of the Northern 
Line the number of different non-interchangeable 
parts that must be carried in stock is exactly 32,000, 
and that the total stock comprising these parts includes 
1,700,000 articles. In one year this Depot supplied 
2,500,000 spares, and this merely represents the spare 
demands of one Depot. Altogether the Supply Depots 
in France are required to keep on hand during the 
course of a year not less than 70,000 different non- 
interchangeable spares and in some cases a great 
number of each item. 

When you consider that there must be a separate 
bin for each kind of " spare " and a complete record 
for each part issued, that in a single day Demands often 
come in from the Field for two or three hundred items, 
that every one of these mechanical fixtures must be 
kept constantly renewed, you get some conception of 
the intricacies and the hardships that attend adequate 



THE MIRACLE OF TRANSPORT 91 

and continuous supply. Yet in the face of all these 
handicaps no truck or car has ever been required to 
wait more than twenty-four hours for its spares. It 
is a tremendous tribute to the efficiency of the whole 
Supply organization. 

Right here you get the significance of the lesson for 
America. By adopting a few standard trucks or cars 
with interchangeable parts at the very outset of its 
war operations the United States Government can 
save itself infinite time, trouble and expense in its 
Mechanical Transport. The same thing is true of 
aeroplane engines. Standardization — ancient middle 
name of American business — would work wonders in 
every branch of the armv that has to deal with a 
gasolene engine. 

The procedure of motor part renewal is very simple . 
The units in the field make their Demands through 
the Advanced Mechanical Transport Depot. If the 
part is not available from stock there, it is secured 
from the Base. The Advanced Depot, however, only 
renews the cars in the actual zones of the armies. The 
damaged cars that come to the so-called Heavy 
Repair Shops and the cars used in all the Base and 
Advanced Supply Depots are supplied from the Base 
Mechanical Transport Depots. 

In view of the immense number and variety of parts, 
every precaution is taken to ensure accuracy in the 
original Demand. Every Mechanical Transport Supply 
Officer in the field is required to pass an examination 
in a book called The Demand for Spare Parts. This 
is the Bible of " M.T." renewal. It contains a 
simple description of every part used, its purpose and 
how it is ordered. Specimen Demand Sheets are 
printed. It is as near fool- and mistake-proof as 
possible. If the officer is ordering a rear axle he is 
required to give the War Department number of the 
car and also the chassis number. These numbers are 
a part of the Mechanical Transport Census, which is 
in the library of every Base and Advanced Mechanical 



92 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

Transport Depot. If the Demand is in any way 
obscure the Census is consulted, the exact car is 
located and the proper axle furnished. In this illustra- 
tion I have used a very large part, but the same process 
would apply to the smallest part. Every spare and 
accessory has a number and it is ordered by that 
number. 

In order to reduce the possibility of error in spare 
supply to a minimum, and to enable the Demands for 
parts from the units in the field to be dealt with 
promptly by non-technical and perhaps eventually by 
female labour (women are succeeding soldiers wherever 
possible in all Supply and Transport Depots in order 
to release fighting men), it has been found necessary 
to have a staff of technically trained men to scrutinize 
every Demand, to verify its accuracy and to ensure 
that the parts shipped are suitable for the vehicle for 
which they are intended. The men who do this work 
are called Scrutineers. After deciding that the item 
demanded can be legitimately supplied, the Scrutineer 
marks its catalogue number on the Demand in red 
ink, which locates it at once in the Ledger or Stock 
Account of the Depot and enables the correct issue 
to be made in the Store. This is merely insurance 
against the possibility of mistakes in numbers. 

In order to assist the Scrutineer in his work Makers' 
catalogues of spare parts were formerly used, but 
these were found to be so inaccurate that what is called 
a Vocabulary has been compiled bj/ each Depot for 
its use. This Vocabulary is one of the many distinct 
and permanent contributions that motor transport 
operation in the war is making to the development of 
the whole automobile business. Each Vocabulary is 
a sort of encyclopaedia for the particular vehicle with 
which it deals. It contains a complete list of each 
and every part, its description, its part number, the 
quantity used per vehicle and, finally, the card number 
which identifies it in the Depot Ledger account. 

These are the purely formal details. More important 



THE MIRACLE OF TRANSPORT 93 

is the information as to the interchangeability of the 
various parts, so that when a certain spare is out of 
stock another from another car can be issued and used 
in its place. Here is where the vocabulary will be of 
inestimable benefit to the motor manufacturer every- 
where. It will teach the maker of a specific product 
facts about his own product that he never knew before. 

But the Vocabulary contains other information of 
value to the administration of Supply. As a result 
of many conferences between the technical officers of 
the various Depots the stocks of " spares " have been 
reduced to the fewest possible shapes and sizes, and 
a drastic censorship of accessories and fittings estab- 
lished. This censorship deals with articles which in 
time of war are considered as luxuries, and therefore 
not permissible upon the ground of economy. Thus, 
only staff vehicles are permitted to have electric- 
light equipment ; others are denied mechanical horns ; 
certain cars are not allowed speedometers, and so on. 

In the same way it has been decreed that certain 
parts must be made by the workshops for the units in 
the field, in order to keep down the demands on the 
parts manufacturers. This refers, of course, only to 
the simplest pieces. If an officer reports that he 
cannot make these parts he is told that he must or 
do without them. It makes for conservation. 

To sum up, the Vocabulary ensures accuracy of issue, 
and permits no discrepancies. More than this, it is 
bringing about a standardization of parts which is 
one of the greatest possible aids not only to the whole 
Army Transport Service, but to the automobile manu- 
facturer generally. It is not saying too much to add 
that the ownership of one of these complete Vocabu- 
laries would be an invaluable asset to any motor maker. 

To return to " spares " Issue again, all parts are 
kept in bins in warehouses as nearly fireproof as 
possible. Every precaution must be taken to protect 
the stocks, because in the case of those intended for 
American cars they must travel across three thousand 



94 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

miles of submarine-infested seas, and any shortage 
would work a great hardship. 

Usually there is one shed or hangar for every two 
makes of cars. The sharpest check is kept on the state 
of supply. Hence alongside each bin hangs what is 
called a Provision Card. It is very much like the Tally- 
board which is used to record the state of the stocks 
of supplies in the Base Supply Depots. On this 
Provision Card is written the name of the part, the 
vehicle for which it is intended, the name of the maker, 
the horse-power or type, and the part number in the 
catalogue of Stores. Under this is a specific list of 
Demands made up to date for this part, the number 
issued, the amount of stock on hand and the last order 
on the Home Depot in England for renewal of supply. 
An officer walking through the shed can thus appraise 
the supply situation in a very few minutes. Every 
Depot keeps a two months' supply of every item, the 
supply being based on the average monthly consump- 
tion of the three preceding months. 

Four vouchers are issued for every spare. One goes 
with the article itself, another remains behind at the 
Depot, while the other two are sent by post to ensure 
the arrival of some evidence of the shipment. One of 
these is signed by the consignee and returned to the 
Depot as a receipt. He keeps the other for his own 
records. 

One iron-clad rule of supply gives a sidelight on the 
curb on waste. No new spare part is issued until 
the old part is tendered in exchange. If the part is 
destroyed, a complete report on the manner of destruc- 
tion is required. 

The whole business of spare supply has developed a 
curious kink in human nature. During the past three 
years army experience has proved that every transport 
column has a tendency to hoard spare parts, which is 
a more or less unfair procedure, because the whole 
Supply organization is based on furnishing actual 
needs with a fair reserve for emergency. In order 



THE MIRACLE OF TRANSPORT 95 

to prevent hoarding, every unit is required to keep a 
record called Stock of Spare Parts, on which must be 
recorded the exact stock on hand, the unit require- 
ments and any surplus. These sheets are inspected 
periodically by officers who not only scrutinize the 
sheet, but compare the figures on it with the actual 
supply. The hoarder never gets away with it. 

After spare parts the most important supply detail 
is rubber tires, which are as essential to the well-being 
of Transport as gasolene. These tires must be safe- 
guarded in every conceivable way. They are kept in 
darkened sheds, because exposure to steady light has 
been found to be injurious. 

These tires are arranged in long racks that reach 
to the ceiling. If you desire some idea of the part 
that rubber is playing in the conduct of the war, just 
inspect one of these warehouses. At one British Bcise 
Mechanical Transport Depot I saw 44,000 pneumatic 
tires, 40,000 inner tubes and 17,000 solid tires for 
trucks under one roof. The value of rubber tires at 
another Depot that I saw was $3,750,000, and this, 
you must remember, is merely one small item in the 
expense of Mechanical Transport, 

Compared with the issue of spare parts the supplying 
of tires is child's play. Each truck or car carries the 
usual number of extra tires, which tides them over any 
emergency. These portable stocks are renewed from 
time to time. 

In order to facilitate the work of renewing solid 
tires huge engine-driven tire presses are scattered 
throughout the army zone. Every truck driver has 
a map showing the location of these presses. If he 
breaks a tire on the road he makes a bee-line for one 
of these first-aid stations, has his tire pressed on, and 
goes about his business. If, by any chance, he has 
no extra tire, he can get one at the press, sign for it, 
and it is charged up to the account of his unit. 

Spare parts are not the only troubles that beset 
the Mechanical Transport Depot Officer. The staff of 



96 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

one of these Depots is constantly being called upon 
to provide a variety of articles that tests ingenuity 
to the last degree. Unexpected needs develop, for 
example, in connection with the water tank wagon. 
As you may well imagine, every possible care must 
be exercised to safeguard the water that Tommy 
drinks. Before making one of their well-known 
" victorious retreats " the German has a nasty habit 
of poisoning wells. Even if the Boche did not tamper 
with the water supply, there is always danger from 
spies, who seem to lurk everywhere. No officer, 
therefore, would think of letting his men drink out of 
a well in a new area without having it tested first. 
All this means that an immense amount of filtration 
and purification is necessary. 

One day last summer the Commanding Officer of 
a Base Mechanical Transport Depot got a hurry-up 
call for filter sand to be used in an active army area. 
His station had never before furnished such material, 
but he got on the job at once, because army requisi- 
tions must be filled. He immediately detailed a 
temporary officer who happened to be a chemist, and 
instructed him to comb the seacoast until he found 
a suitable sand. The officer located what he wanted, 
built a small drying furnace overnight, and the im- 
provised filter was on its way to the front the next 
morning. 

At the Base Mechanical Transport Depot for the 
Southern Line you find precisely the same organization 
as in the North. Here a whole new industry exists 
for the salvaging of battered spare parts. Since 
standardization of parts cannot be completely effected, 
homogeneity of make is the next best thing. Hence 
all British makes of trucks and cars are supplied from 
the Southern Base, which permits a similar con- 
centration for American cars at the Northern Depots. 

You cannot leave these Base Depots without finding 
out how that most essential of all motor supphes — 
gasolene — is handled. At every Base port is a huge 



THE MIRACLE OF TRANSPORT 97 

so-called Petrol Installation. In these immense 
establishments you discover an efficiency, a co- 
ordination and a continuity of output that would do 
credit to the Standard Oil Company. In fact, if you 
want to discover a real War Octopus, just locate the 
gasolene end of Mechanical Transport and you will 
find it. 

The whole army petrol supply represents an inter- 
esting evolution. In the early period of the war aU 
the canning and reshipping of the fuel was done at a 
certain English port. This was very easy when the 
monthly consumption was only 250,000 gallons. But 
as the armies grew and the fleets of Mechanical Trans- 
port expanded with them this system became im- 
practicable. France alone uses up 4,000,000 gallons of 
gasolene every month ; Salonika, 1,500,000 ; Egypt, 
90,000 ; while 1,000,000 gallons are necessary for the 
Home Forces. 

In 1916 the zone of gasolene operations for France 
was shifted to that country. The tank ships now go 
there direct from the Far East and America, pipe 
their cargoes into huge storage tanks at the ports, 
whence it is piped in turn to the canneries. 

Formerly the standard petrol pack was a fifty- 
gallon steel drum for the truck and a two-gallon tin 
for the car. The drum, however, was found to be 
heavy and costly, and a four-gallon can was substituted. 
The two-gallon receptacle remains in use for the car. 

To keep the armies supplied with " gas " a tre- 
mendous industry had to be built up to meet the 
giant needs. At the beginning of the war most of the 
hundreds of thousands of cans were made in England 
and shipped to France. It required such a tonnage 
that the factories were literally transported to the 
Base Mechanical Transport Depots. The swiftness of 
this transition illustrates how^war has galvanized 
every activity that touches it.i 

Here is an instance of genuine war-time hustle. 
On a certain Thursday night the largest of these 

7 



98 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

gasolene can factories was operating in a town in 
England. Exactly nine days afterwards it was in 
full swing at a port in France. Every ton of machinery 
had been moved in that time and set up without 
mishap. It moved into a series of abandoned factories 
that had been carefully prepared for the change. 
Another can factory rose out of a marsh in exactly 
eight weeks. In this case wooden buildings had to 
be erected and the machinery assembled in England 
and shipped over. The construction and operation 
of these factories in France has released six ships that 
are now employed for other tonnage. 

These can factories work day and night. The 
operatives are EngUsh boys too young to fight, but 
who are a part of the army organization and wear 
khaki. Just as soon as they reach mihtary age they 
go into the fighting forces or the Army Service Corps. 
Meanwhile they are drilled and get a rudimentary 
idea of the military game. It keeps them fit. These 
boys are supplemented by thousands of French 
women who adapt themselves surprisingly well to the 
labour-saving machinery. 

The new cans go straight from the factory to the 
filUng-room, where women do all the work. From 
eight to ten thousand cans are filled every day. Rail- 
way tracks run straight into these annexes, and every 
day four solid trains of gasolene go up the line from 
each Depot. The standard railway freight car in 
France contains 1200 gallons of fuel, and each train 
averages 40 cars. Immense as this supply seems, it 
is just enough to keep the voracious engine of British 
Mechanical Transport tuned up and humming. 



VI 
THE MOTOR UNDER FIRE 

WHEN you reach the Advanced Mechanical 
Transport Depot you are one step nearer 
to actual army operations. It is the link 
between Field and Base — the emergency 
clearing-house through which a stream of supphes 
flows steadily. 

These Advanced Depots do a big business in spare 
parts. Each station keeps a month's supply of parts, 
tires, tools and accessories on hand. A simple and 
comprehensive system is in operation. As soon as a 
Demand for stores arrives, the items are written on a 
card which has a number. This number becomes the 
permanent record of the order through all the successive 
stages of filling, packing and shipping. Thus any 
detail of it can be easily traced. A so-called Issue and 
Receipt Voucher is issued in duplicate for every order. 
One of these is retained by the consignor, while the 
other is signed by the consignee at Railhead, who 
returns it as a receipt for goods delivered. 

Every detail of work at an Advanced Mechanical 
Transport Depot contributes to the facility of opera- 
tion. All supphes, for instance, are divided into two 
groups. One, marked A, includes equipment for 
British-made cars, while the other, marked B, is 
devoted to the needs of American makes. When the 
Demand comes in, it can immediately be stamped with 
one of these distinguishing letters. 
One detail will show the efficiency of the Advanced 



100 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

station system. At the close of each day's business 
every item that has been Demanded and packed that 
day must be accounted for. It must either be shipped, 
packed, or in the shipping bin ready to go up in the 
sectional Pack Train the following morning. If it is 
out of stock the Demand for it must be on the way to 
the Base Depot to be filled. In this way there is no 
" hang over " from day to day. The whole scheme of 
Mechanical Supply is based upon the idea that there 
must be no interference with traffic. 

The issuance of parts and accessories, important as 
it is, constitutes but one phase of motor renewal. 
Every day trucks are smashed by shell fire, staff cars 
are disabled and motor-cycles wrecked. If repairable, 
the job must be done at once. To watch this operation 
you must come still farther afield to what is known as 
the Heavy Repair Shop. These shops are located in 
towns that skirt the zones of the armies. They must 
be immune from shell fire, although they are sometimes 
bombarded by aircraft. They are complete motor 
factories employing hundreds of men and women. 

The Heavy Repair Shops are all fed, in the main, 
from the Casualty Park. Here you are bang up 
against the ravage that war wreaks. A Casualty 
Park is precisely what its namic implies. It is the 
place where the wrecks of war are dumped, sorted out, 
sent on to be repaired or consigned to the junk heap. 

Go to one of these Parks and in the heaped-up ruins 
of transport you get a vivid cross-section of war. If 
these mute and gaping wounds could speak, they would 
unfold a tale of sacrifice and death written in blood 
and agony on many an unsung field. 

A shell-shattered truck visuahzes the tragedy of 
a Divisional Supply Column that has ploughed through 
the night with its freight of food for the front and met 
disaster at a turn of the road. A riddled ambulance 
shows how an errand of succour was halted by the 
shrapnel that knows neither mercy nor charity. The 
twisted remnant of a motor-cycle is eloquent tribute 



THE MOTOR UNDER FIRE loi 

to the courage of a. gallant dispatch rider who rushed 
to his doom on some hell -swept highway, while the 
mangled staff car proves that the men who direct the 
fighting are in the turmoil themselves. This mud- 
spattered and sanguinary mass of wreckage is a grim 
and ghastly gaUery that pictures the heroism of the 
Army Service Corps. 

In connection with these Casualty Parks is an 
interesting piece of war psychology. They are all 
screened from the highway so as to be invisible to the 
traffic that moves up and down. There is a definite 
reason for this. If an army chauffeur, going up to the 
front for the first time with a brand new truck, sees the 
horrible havoc that shells create, his enthusiasm is not 
likely to be fired, nor will his war spirit be increased. 
After seeing a lorry that has been put out of com- 
mission he is apt to say to himself, " What's the use 
of going up anyway ? " It is precisely like the effect 
produced upon a man who goes into a hospital for an 
operation and is required to pass through the morgue 
on the way to his room. 

At the Casualty Parks every piece of wreckage is 
carefuUy inspected with a view to repair or salvage. 
If it is absolutely beyond rehabilitation all the avail- 
able metal is extracted, melted down and used again, 
while the accessories, like lamps, go to the salvage 
shop to be restored. 

A repairable vehicle, no matter how badly battered, 
goes without delay to the Heavy Repair Shop, whence 
it emerges like new. These shops, like every other 
industrial institution aUied to Supply and Transport, 
are marvels of organization. When a truck, or rather 
the remnants of a truck, reach the estabhshment, its 
history is written on a card just like the record of a 
patient is registered as soon as he enters a hospital. 
In fact the Heavy Repair Shop is the Hospital of 
Mechanical Transport. Every stage of vehicle recon- 
struction is noted, first in a Daily, and later in a Weekly, 
Record of Repair^ 



102 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

Through the medium of a friendly rivalry in output 
these shops are kept constantly speeded up. This 
is done by posting the records of the various shops 
where the men can see them. The results are very 
striking. When X shop learned one day last August 
that Y shop had overhauled and issued 67 trucks 
in one week it got an extra move on itself and turned 
out 81 the next week. The shops are manned by 
skilled mechanics. The foremen are usually non- 
commissioned officers, who had similar jobs in auto- 
mobile factories in England, while the superintendents 
and heads of departments are motor manufacturers 
or engineers . 

Closely associated with the largest Heavy Repair 
Shop in France is an institution which has tremendous 
meaning for the United States in her war preparation. 
I refer to the School for Officers. Here the aspirants 
for commissions in the Mechanical Transport Service 
get their training in a course of instruction that would 
do credit to the most thoroughly organized business 
university. 

There is every detail of a technical college. The 
lecture-rooms are equipped with working models 
of every section of an automobile. You can see 
engines working and crank-shafts turning. In one 
hall is a complete and labelled collection of every 
part and accessory that belongs to a motor-car or 
a truck. Every class is limited to twenty men, which 
enables each member to ask all the questions he 
wants to ask and to be carefully cross-examined 
in turn. 

Each applicant for a commission must pass an 
oral and written examination, and is also required 
to give a demonstration of his ability to run a car 
or truck under actual traffic conditions in the war 
zone. For one thing, he is required to operate a- five- 
ton truck on the road at night with huge caterpillar 
tractors snorting all around him and making things 
highly uncomfortable for the driver. His gear is 



THE MOTOR UNDER FIRE 103 

tangled up by mechanical experts and he is made 
to straighten it out and repair it within a given time. 
Clad in overalls, he is put at a forge to learn exactly 
how castings are made. He must take a hand at 
assembling a car and do his bit in the engine-room. 
This is why the School of Instruction is located near a 
Heavy Repair Shop, where there are excellent facilities 
to study the making and the remaking of all types of 
Mechanical Transport from motor-cycles to Four- 
Wheel Drives. 

The commissioned ranks of Mechanical Transport 
draw to a considerable extent upon men who have 
had to work with their hands all their lives. The 
moment they get commissions they are considered to 
be " Officers and Gentlemen." They must be prepared 
to meet the responsibilities of their new social station. 
Hence they are polished off with a course in etiquette 
and deportment. 

Just as soon as a truck or car is completely over- 
hauled it is sent to what is known as the Reserve 
Vehicle Park, which bears the same relation to France 
or the field anywhere that the Vehicle Pool does to 
England. In other words, it is the great Reserve 
Store that fills the gaps made by enemy shells, accidents, 
breakdowns or general wear and tear. It has two 
sources of suppty — one the repaired vehicle from the 
Heavy Repair Shop, as you have already seen, and 
the other the new vehicle which comes to the Base 
Mechanical Transport Depot which receives all equip- 
ment as it arrives from England. 

To see one of these Reserve Parks is to get an 
unforgettable impression of the scope of Mechanical 
Transport in the war. Not even the seemingly endless 
procession of supply and ammunition trains rattling 
along the roads gives you such an idea of the magni- 
tude of the Army Transport world on tires. At one 
Park I saw 1400 vehicles, which included 1000 trucks 
and 300 open and closed cars. The rest were ambu- 
lances. They were all parked in long lines that made 



104 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

a noble and really inspiring array, with each vehicle 
freshly painted, its brass gleaming like a mirror in 
the autumn sunlight. As I looked at those shining 
acres I realized that before many weeks elapsed the 
paint would cease to glisten, there would be dents in 
the engine armour, and more than one vehicle that 
now stood so proudly would be in splinters by the 
roadside or patients in the Repair Hospital. 

There is practically no book-keeping at a Reserve 
Vehicle Park ; nor is it necessary. When a car is 
received a record of it is made on a card, which becomes 
part of what is called a Live Index. At the same 
time it is chalked up on a huge blackboard. This 
blackboard enables the Commanding Officer of the 
Park to see at a glance just what stock he has on 
hand. When a Demand for Trucks or cars comes in 
he can fill it at once. Just as soon as the car goes 
out, the date of departure and destination are registered 
on its card, which is now transferred to another index 
called Demand Index. 

Perhaps you are wondering about the human 
equipment of these cars. This is automatic, because, 
as I explained earlier, the moment a truck leaves 
England it carries with it a driver and an extra man. 
These two men stick to the car no matter where it 
goes. If a car is laid up at the Heavy Repair Shop 
they are required to make themselves useful about 
the factory. At the Vehicle Park they must do like- 
wise. They are required to keep the cars in perfect 
order, so that the entire Reserve Supply can be moved 
on half an hour's notice. This means that every truck 
and car has its gasolene tank and extra tins filled, its 
tools in perfect order and every accessory intact. 
A turn of the crank is all that is needed to put it in 
commission. 

I saw an extraordinary demonstration of the up- 
to-the-minute fitness of the vehicles at a certain 
Reserve Park. Fire, of course, is one of the great 
hazards, and every possible precaution is taken against 



THE MOTOR UNDER FIRE 105 

such disaster. For my benefit a fire drill was given 
one afternoon. The Commanding Officer asked me to 
indicate a vehicle that should be the basis for the 
alarm. I selected a three-ton truck in the middle of 
a line of sixty. These trucks faced one way, while 
backed up against them were sixty more trucks facing 
the other. In all directions extended lanes of every 
type of motor-car used in the army. I put a can in 
front of the truck indicated, and the officer rang the 
fire alarm without any previous warning to the men. 

In less than three minutes after that bell sounded 
the truck in question was out on the roadside, and a 
sufficient gap had been made in the two lines of cars 
to prevent any spread of flames had it been impossible 
to remove the car that was supposed to be on fire. 
It would have been absolutely isolated. Every man 
at the Park had a definite thing to do, and he did it 
in record time. Forty of them immediately manned 
trucks and got them out of the hypothetical fire zone. 
Twenty others formed the crew of the motor fire-engine 
and water tank which accompanied it. Here was a 
fire department and portable water mains — a unique 
combination. 

The moment a truck goes to a unit it [is stamped 
with the device of the army to which it is attached. 
Each large fighting unit h*as its own hall-mark. It 
may be a grenade, a shamrock, a star or a crown. All 
ammunition trucks are marked with a large white 
shell, which identifies them at once. The French 
markings are much more frivolous than the British. 
You can see their huge camions — the French word for 
trucks — ornamented with pictures of barking dogs, 
crowing cocks or running hares. 

All vehicles that break down in the field are not 
sent to the Heavy Repair Shop, which is only used 
for real casualties. vScores of trucks are only shghtly 
damaged every day. For these the Shop reverses the 
usual procedure and Uterally goes to the rehef of the 
disabled. This brings us to the whole system of 



io6 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

Mobile Repair Shops, which contribute the most 
thrilling chapter in the whole story of Mechanical 
Transport reconstruction. 

You are now up in the zones of the armies where 
shells are flying, where the mechanics take their lives 
in their hands with the tools, and where trucks, cars 
and motor-cycles limp in from the battle areas, have 
their wounds dressed and go back on the job. They 
correspond with the so-called walking cases with the 
wounded. 

Chief among these field patients are the gallant 
Divisional Supply Columns — the squadrons that get 
the food there no matter what lies in the path, and 
the no less gallant Ammunition Parks, These two 
units represent the Farthest North of the Army 
Mechanical Transport. 

A Mobile Repair Shop is a miniature motor factory 
on wheels. It is usually built on a five-ton truck 
chassis, provides its own motor-power, and is thus 
enabled to go up and down the war area. Usually a 
Shop has a definite and fixed abode, but there is always 
an extra Shop that answers hurry-up calls. I mean 
by this that if a truck breaks down on the road or gets 
mired in a ditch the mountain comes to Mahomet. 
There are scores of minor defects and accidents, how- 
ever, that do not require this procedure. The truck 
or car goes to the Repair Shop, which is often located 
in an open field. The conduct of these Shops demands 
courage and stamina. Like the Supply and Ammuni- 
tion trains, they follow in the wake of the advancing 
armies. They are in truth First Aid to the Mechanic- 
ally Injured. 

The Mobile Shops do a great deal more than minor 
repairs on the spot. They extricate trucks that slip 
into shell holes ; they re-tire vehicles and they deliver 
the derelicts to the Heavy Repair Shops. The nearest 
parallel to this whole institution that I can think of 
is the Flying Squadron of a Street Railway, which is 
a portable repair shop that goes racing up and down 



THE MOTOR UNDER FIRE 107 

the tracks binding up the wounds of traffic. The 
difference between the Street Railway Emergency 
car and the Mobile Shop is that one is not under fire 
and the other is exposed to nearly all the dangers 
incurred by the fighting armies. 

You have now spanned the whole Mechanical 
Transport activity from factory to the front. You 
have seen how the motor vehicle brings up food, hauls 
ammunition, conveys soldiers, moves the wounded from 
field station to train or hospital, fills up Base and 
Advanced Supply Depots with stores and renews itself 
with clock-like and unfaiUng regularity. This machine 
must be maintained at all hazards, because a break- 
down between Railhead and Refilling Point, for 
example, would work a very serious hardship with the 
men in the trenches, while an interruption between 
Railhead and Ammunition Dump might jeopardize 
the success of advance. 

How, then, is the army vehicle kept fit so that, aside 
from the damage by enemy action and the natural 
hazards of congested traffic, it remains out of the 
repair shop and does its job ? England expects 
every motor-truck to do its duty, and, thanks to a 
remarkable system of inspection, it does. 

To see just how this system works you must retrace 
your steps to General Headquarters and go with me 
into the office of General Boyce, who is the originator 
and head of the whole scheme. It is epitomized on a 
big chart, covered with red, green, blue and black 
marks, that hangs on the wall opposite him. These 
marks indicate the exact physical condition of every 
transport unit in the field. Here is the way it works : 
the inspection of vehicles is by Divisions, each 
having its own Mechanical Transport organization, 
which bears the number of the Division to which it is 
attached. Just as soon as a Division Transport Unit 
is inspected the result is marked on the chart in colours. 
If it registers 100 per cent in efficiency and upkeep 
it gets a green mark ; if the rating is 75 per cent the 



io8 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

record is blue ; if 50 per cent it is red. Any rating 
below 50 per cent literally gets a black mark. The 
Director of Transport, therefore, can sit at his desk 
and know from the colour scheme in front of him the 
physical state of the organization he controls. 

So much for the results of inspection. Let us 
now watch the operation. Under General Boyce is 
a staff of thirty inspectors. Although they wear 
British uniforms and rank as lieutenants and captains, 
every one of them was an automobile expert before 
the war. Each inspector has a district. His job is 
to see that the Mechanical Transport in his bailiwick 
is thoroughly inspected every three months. This 
means that every car is overhauled four times a year. 

These inspectors do not go about their jobs with 
a brass band. They show up at Mechanical Transport 
Unit Headquarters at all hours of the day or night. 
I went with one of these inspectors once on a very 
characteristic trip. We were travelling down a 
well-beaten road in the zone of a certain army when 
an empty three-ton truck came into view. My com- 
panion suddenly turned to me and said : 

" I have a hunch that there is something the matter 
with that truck." 

He had spent much time in America and had picked 
up some of our slang, as you observe. 

When the truck came alongside he stopped it, told 
the chauffeur who he was and immediately proceeded 
to examine the vehicle. First of all he glanced at the 
driver's Log. In five minutes he discovered that the 
lubrication pipe was on the verge of becoming choked. 
If this had not been located the car would have broken 
down before it had gone much farther. 

These inspectors have the right to hold up cars 
anywhere, and all military policemen and traffic 
officers (the highways of war are as adequately policed 
as Broadway in New York or State Street in Chicago) 
have special instructions to back them up in every 
possible way. An inspector, however, would never 



THE MOTOR UNDER FIRE 109 

hold up a loaded truck. If he sees, that there is 
anything wrong with it he will order the driver to 
report to him after he delivers his load. 

Watch one of these inspectors in action and you 
soon understand why the British Mechanical Transport 
is so efhcient. When an Army Inspector inspects 
he inspects all over. He wears overalls and gets 
under the truck or car. From this point of first- 
hand observation he caUs out his discoveries to a 
stenographer, who accompanies him on all his expedi- 
tions. Thus he overlooks nothing and has a record 
of everything. A specific report is made on every 
car inspected. It covers engine, front and back axle, 
transmission, body and equipment, and does not 
overlook the inevitable rope, chain and kit of digging 
tools that every army truck in the field is required to 
carry. Between snow and mud the truck chauffeur 
does almost as much digging as the soldiers in the 
trenches. 

When an inspector overhauls a vehicle he usually 
takes a workshop officer with him who does the manual 
work. The Mechanical Transport inspection also 
includes the scrutiny of all steam transport used in 
the field. A limited number of steam-engines are 
employed to haul some of the heavy guns. With 
them boiler inspection is the most important detail. 

One more significant feature of British Mechanical 
Transport remains to be explained. It answers 
the inevitable question which any survey of this 
tremendous and far-reaching technical activity would 
provoke. That question is : " How does the army 
keep track of more than fifty thousand vehicles that 
are being constantly shifted from place to place ? " 

The answer is to be found in a Registration System 
which begins as soon as a vehicle enters the service 
and continues until it is wiped off the Transport Map. 
Just as soon as a truck, for instance, arrives from 
England at a Base Mechanicalf Transport Depot in 
France its complete physical record is written on what 



no THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

is called a Vehicle Registration Form. There is a 
separate sheet for each make of vehicle. It includes 
the War Department number, the chassis type and 
number, the engine type and number, the size of 
front and rear tires and the drive. 

When a truck is assigned to a unit the narrative 
of its travels begins and a careful check is kept on 
its movements from that hour on. Every time it is 
transferred from one unit to another a report is sent 
to what is called the Census Branch, which is located 
in a little French town not many miles from General 
Headquarters, and which is the fountain-head of all 
information about the great Mechanical Transport 
Fleet in France. You can go into its office any day, 
ask for the location of a truck or car and find out in 
less than five minutes. More than this, you can get 
the complete biography of the vehicle from the time 
it entered the service. 

That history is first summarized on an ordinary 
form card which is kept in a Live Index. As I write, 
I have before me a copy of a card on which is typed 
the Army Record of an American three-ton truck. At 
the top is its War Department number, the make and 
the type and number of chassis and engine. Below 
is a complete itemized list of every unit to which this 
car has been attached and the date of its service 
with it. 

From this record you can see the different kind 
of work that an Army Truck is called upon to per- 
form. This car's experience was no different from 
that of thousands of others scattered throughout 
Northern France. 

The Card Index, however, only represents the 
first stage of Vehicle Intelligence. It is a sort of 
Information Outpost. All the data in it and much 
more is transferred to a large loose-leaf ledger, which 
constitutes the complete Motor Census of the Army 
Mechanical Transport. This book, which is being 
constantly revised, is an astonishing efficiency exhibit, 



THE MOTOR UNDER FIRE iii 

and would be worth its weight in gold to any motor 
manufacturer. It is indexed under makes, and these 
makes in turn are registered according to their con- 
secutive chassis numbers. 

Examine a leaf taken at random from the Census 
Ledger and you can see exactly how it works. The 
one that I shall use for illustration happens to deal 
with one of the best known English makes. On it is 
printed (not typed, mind you) the date that the cars 
or ambulances entered the service, the units to which 
they have been attached, the War Department and 
chassis numbers, engine types and numbers, the size 
of the tires and the original source of the car or truck. 
In the case of a purchased vehicle the factory name is 
given. Where the motor-car is a gift from private 
individual or organization the name of the donor is 
presented. It may be a duke or a private citizen. If 
a car or truck is returned to England or " scrapped," 
this information is set forth in a separate column. 
The Ledger is so devised as to leave plenty of blank 
space for coming events in the life of the vehicle. As 
these events happen they are printed on small slips of 
paper and pasted on the leaf. Thus the Census be- 
comes a really notable industrial document. 

Its value is as varied as it is great. Aside from 
being an absolutely infallible and up-to-date register 
of all Mechanical Transport in the army, it supplies 
the basis for the adequate provision of spare parts and 
accessories. It likewise enables the Financial Adviser 
to the War Office accurately to estimate Mechanical 
Transport expenditures and to write off all vehicles as 
soon as they are useless. Like the Vocabulary, it is a 
definite and permanent contribution to the uplift of 
the whole motor industry— one of the Compensations 
of War, 



VII 

THE SALVAGE OF BATTLE 

WHATEVER designation the Great War may 
have in history no one will ever deny that, 
among other things, it is a War of Con- 
trasts. It provides the amazing spectacle 
of German and Turk Ijdng down together ; of ancient 
foes Uke England and France lined up on a common 
battlefront of freedom ; of American troops under 
arms marching through the streets of London ; of 
Industry reborn and Society transformed. But no 
contrast — not even the flowering of thrift amid the 
ruins of colossal war expenditure — is so striking as 
the welding of Waste and Conservation. Of all the 
strange bedfellows of war these are the strangest. 

From time immemorial War has spelled destruction. 
Yet out of the vast vortex which to-day engulfs men, 
money and materials is coming another tremendous 
lesson in economy that will make peace efficient and 
more orderly. The Salvage of War has been reduced 
to a precise science and is a definite and inseparable 
part of army operations in the field. The hand that 
destroys is the first to renew. Here you touch the 
least known of the many activities that go to make up 
the stupendous Business of War. 

Again you get the example of a powerful War 
Machine that began with almost nothing. The first 
salvage was casual, and depended, in the main, upon the 
initiative or enterprise of individual officers. Now it 
is a full-fledged War Office Department with a complete 



THE SALVAGE OF BATTLE 113 

and far-reaching organization all its own and dedicated 
solely to rehabilitation. It saves the British Govern- 
ment millions of dollars every year, and points, at the 
same time, a moral that nothing else could so forcibly 
impress. It is another Cinderella of the Service — 
once rejected, even abused — that has developed into 
one of the permanent benefits of the huge conflict. 

In former wars the human being was about the only 
thing regarded as redeemable. While there was Ufe 
there was always the proverbial hope that the fighting 
man could be saved and possibly restored to some 
usefulness. A^ for arms, ammunition, equipment, 
food and stores of all kinds, the attitude was different. 
Why waste time on supphes that could be renewed ? 
Everything spoiled or damaged went into the junk 
heap and was buried or burned. This is one reason 
why War became the synonym for Waste. To preach 
reclamation on any kind of scale was almost unsoldierly 
— it sank to the basely commercial although it invited 
the inevitable post-war inquiry scandal. 

But that state of mind existed when war, as com- 
pared with present-day operations, was on a pigmy 
scale. With a host equal to half the entire population 
of the United States called to the colours in all the 
nations involved, and with an average daily outlay of 
$160,000,000, Governments are inchned to try to 
snatch a few faggots from the titanic fires. The 
British efforts in this direction have created an Agency 
of Reconstruction that is a marvel of administration. 
The legend of the pig squeal, phonographed in 
Chicago's Packingtown, to prove that the Beef Barons 
waste nothing, has a real parallel in the economies 
now practised with army food alone. 

During the first six months of the war — or even 
longer — there was terrific waste. In the circumstances 
this was a very natural procedure. With food and 
equipment the whole effort of the War Office was con- 
centrated on one ambition — to fill stomachs, to clothe 
bodies and to arm hands. In the mad rush to stem 
8 



114 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

the German advance there was no time to think of 
economy. 

You had only to go to any one of the Mobilization 
Depots in England when Kitchener's First Hundred 
Thousand was being raised to find out that the British 
Government was looked upon by both the civil and 
miUtary population as the Lady Bountiful. When 
battalions moved away from Salisbury Plain or one 
of the other great training camps, nearly every house 
within a radius of fifteen miles was not only equipped 
with one or more army blankets, but army food and 
stores of all description. When scores of men went 
home on leave, their rations were drawn by the 
Quartermaster-Sergeants just the same. It went to 
the garbage heap or to the camp followers. When an 
economically disposed officer remonstrated with his 
men about the ungodly waste the invariable reply was : 

" The Government is rich and can afford it. Why 
worry ? " 

Curiously enough, the first sense of saving manifested 
itself where there was the greatest destruction. This 
means that it began in France. It is not surprising 
also that it started with the Scotch, whose heroism 
under fire is only equalled by their thrift behind 
the hues. Instinct made the Highlander shy at the 
immense waste. He was not so keen as his Enghsh 
mate to discard a shghtly soiled kilt or a dam.aged 
coat. His example was contagious, because, when all 
is said and done, thrift is a habit easily acquired. 

Originally only guns and rifles were salvaged. The 
time-honoured method of disposing of the debris of 
battle was to assemble it in huge piles and set fire 
to them. They proved to be costly bonfires. Along 
in 191 5 began the practice of segregating the wreckage 
of the battlefields and hauling it back to so-caUed 
" Dumps." The uniforms were taken out and sold 
for rags at $250 a ton. Only the brass buttons were 
retained. Practically all the other refuse was 
destroyed. 



THE SALVAGE OF BATTLE 115 

One day the Quartermaster-General to all the 
Forces, Lieutenant-General Sir John Cowans, had 
an inspiration. He said to himself : "If these 
uniforms are worth $250 a ton to the junkman they 
ought to be worth a good deal more to the army. 
Let us try to restore them." 

As a result only actual rags went to the ragman 
and the nearly rags were sent to Paris to be restored. 
Out of this grew the great Paris Ordnance Depot, 
which to-day employs nearly four thousand women on 
salvage and saves the British Government in actual 
money more than $12,000,000 a year. 

Such was the beginning of British Army Salvage 
on any kind of organized scale. Long before 1915 
had rounded out its twelve months of blood and 
disaster there was a Salvage Squad in every army 
unit. The work has grown steadily in scope and 
energy. To-day, almost before the flame and fury of 
battle subside, these squads are on the battleground, 
gathering up abandoned steel helmets, rifles, belts, 
haversacks, bayonets, shell cases, unexploded bombs 
and grenades, clothes, leggings, shoes — in fact, every 
scrap of stuff that can be transported. 

All this equipment is thrown into motor-trucks or 
wagons and hauled behind the Unes, where it is sorted 
out into individual items, loaded upon freight-cars and 
sent off to the various bases to be reclaimed there or 
sent on to England to be salvaged. Everything must 
be redeemed, or yield the British Government some 
return as junk or raw material. Only the dead 
remain where they fall. They alone are the un- 
salvaged. 

Formerly all the shoes to be salvaged were shipped 
to a certain port in the north of France ; the uniforms, 
blankets, kilts, underwear and rubber boots were 
overhauled in Paris, while most of the Ordnance went 
to England. As the Utter of battle grew in volume 
it became necessary to increase the Salvage Depots, 
until there were three shoe-saving stations and half 



ii6 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

a dozen Ordnance Reclamation Establishments in 
France and in England. A small army had to be 
recruited for this work. 

With the development of the salvage idea naturally 
came a definite organization for its conduct. The 
physical end is under the immediate direction of Army 
Service Corps Officers who in civil Ufe were engaged 
in some kind of business. The rank and file are 
enlisted men invalided out of active service or unfit 
for fighting bj?' reason of physical disabihty or over- 
age. For two years each army in the field had a 1 
Salvage Head, while the entire work was supervised f 
by the Quartermaster-General to all the Forces, who 
had a ranking representative at General Headquarters 
in France. 

The scope of salvage reached such a point (its 
financial turnover represented many millions of dollars, 
while the number of articles retrieved grew to an 
almost incredible total) that it has developed into 
what the British Officer would call a separate " show " ; 
that is, a complete and self-sustaining Branch of the 
Army. 

You can see the whole vScheme of Salvage set forth 1 
on one of the huge charts similar to those that outline j 
the strategy of Supply and Transport and their allied I 
activities. Once more you have the helpful pyramid ' 
indicating every step of a vast business system. 

The apex of the pyramid is the Salvage Board, 
composed of the Quartermaster-General, the Master- 
General of Ordnance, the Director-General of Military 
Aeronautics, the Director of Supply and Transport, 
the Director of Ordnance and Equipment Stores, the 
Surveyor-General of Supply, the Director of Military i 
Movements and a representative of the Ministry of |i 
Munitions. The Voice and Interpreter of the Board 
is the Director of Salvage, Brigadier-General L. W. 
Atcherley. In the nature of his executive duties he 
corresponds to the Director of Supply and Transport, 
who is housed under the same roof. Under him are 



THE SALVAGE OF BATTLE 117 

five Deputy Directors of Salvage in England, each 
one in charge of a separate Department. Their 
opposite numbers in the field are called Controllers 
of Salvage. There is one with every army unit over- 
seas, whether it be France, Salonika, Egypt, Africa or 
Mesopotamia. In other words, the sun never sets on 
the British Reclamation programme. 

The first and most spectacular Department in the 
General Organization deals with Collection and Field 
Sorting. This is the unit that hovers on the fringe 
of battle and gets on the job before the smoke lifts 
from the hard-fought fields. Its function, therefore, 
is Battle Salvage. In order to understand the whole 
Reclamation process it might be well to explain here 
that there are two separate and distinct kinds of 
salvage. One is Battle Salvage, which deals with 
the debris of actual fighting and includes all trench 
materials such as wood and iron, shell-cases, guns, 
rifles, equipment, clothing, tools and other stores that 
have been damaged in actual fighting. The other is 
the so-called Normal Salvage, v/hich is material such 
as empty packing-cases, gasolene cans and ■"other 
articles which never reach the battlefield. 

As you examine this Salvage System you find it 
reverses the procedure of Supply and Transport. 
With Food and Motor-Trucks, for example, you begin 
at the Point of Production and follow the commodity 
straight to the front, where it is destroyed or consumed. 
With Salvage, on the other hand, you begin with 
destruction or damage and retrace your steps to 
restoration. 

All Advanced Salvage Depots (here again you find 
the parallel with the Supply and Transport Organiza- 
tion) have a double function. The undamaged equip- 
ment is cleaned on the spot and returned immediately 
to the Issue Stores. The damaged goods are sent back 
to the Base Depots for renewal. This comprises what 
might be called the Field Salvage Organization. 

The next Department deals with Second Sorting. 



ii8 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

A damaged belt or haversack easily repairable might 
be discarded as useless in the routine at the Advanced 
Base and thrown into the junk heap. In order to 
put a check on carelessness the stuff is submitted to a 
second inspection. If there is the slightest chance to 
save it, it goes to a Home Repair Shop located in 
England, where if classed as absolutely hopeless it 
lands among the " scrap " and is distributed by the 
Controller who deals with raw materials. You can 
see from the work of this Department that the 
Salvage Organization lets no possible piece of 
salvable material escape. 

The work of the Third Section is concerned with 
Transport, Classification and Distribution of articles 
to be repaired and of the " scrap " metal and materials. 
It sees that all the goods to be salvaged land in 
England and are distributed to the proper factories and 
Depots. It is in constant communication with the 
War Office as to its needs and as to available ports, 
because all army Shipping is constantly up against the 
eternal problem of tonnage. 

Here, however, there is not the usual hectic scramble 
for cargo space, because the Quartermaster-General's 
ships which go over laden with food and ordnance 
stores are employed to bring the salvage material 
back to England. There are no empty hauls. The 
task, therefore, is to fit the returning ship to the port 
nearest the reclamation depot to be used. Here is 
the way it works : the Deputy Director of Salvage 
in charge of the Third Section is informed by wire 
from France, for example, that fifty i8-pounders are 
to be salvaged and await shipment. He immediately 
gets in touch with the Master-General of Ordnance, 
who naturally asks if they are worth repairing. If 
he is told that they are, he then consults the State of 
Work at Ofdnance Depots. He may find that he 
can squeeze the guns into Woolwich Arsenal, and 
therefore instructs the Deputy Director of Salvage to 
have them shipped there. 



THE SALVAGE OF BATTLE 119 

The next phase in the organization is the all-important 
wing which deals with Statistics, Overhead Cost and 
Accounting. A complete set of books is kept on every 
group of items salvaged. It must yield a profit in 
renewal, or it is sold as junk, or employed as raw 
material. The word profit in connection with salvage 
has a more or less elastic definition. It may mean 
an actual money margin or its equivalent in time 
or labour saved in getting the article fresh from a 
factory. 

When you reach the Fifth and final sub-pyramid in 
the Salvage Organization you are in contact with one 
of the most significant of all its ramified activities, for 
here you reach the Plans for Demobilization. You 
find outlined on paper the stages by which the enor- 
mous armament of war will be transferred to the uses of 
peace in the shortest and most efficient fashion. To 
look at only one angle, when the war ends England 
will find herself owning hundreds of thousands of 
cannon, large and small, and many millions of rifles. 
How to convert all this metal into ploughshares will be 
the great problem. Much of this procedure is secret, 
of course. For one thing, however, it is planned to 
utilize the returning armies to bring this immense 
mass of material home with them. 

The reason is obvious. Just as soon as peace comes 
the average British Tommy is likely to throw away 
his gun and say to himself : " This war is over. The 
devil take the equipment. I am going to beat it back 
to ' Blighty.' " 

The big meaning of this Demobilization Salvage plan 
is that salvage will not end with war. As a matter of 
fact it will just begin. It is a hint of that mighty 
Conservation of all resources which will make Great 
Britain a new world Industrial Power. 

Having seen the outline of the Salvage System you 
can now go into the field and watch it at work. No 
branch of it is more imposing than the Paris Ordnance 
Depot. Here you get a very striking illustration of 



120 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

the growth of Salvage as well as some idea of the 
immense financial profit that accrues to the British 
Government. 

This Depot began as a " Dump " for mud and blood- 
spattered overcoats, riding breeches, blankets and 
kilts. To-day it reclaims millions of articles of wear- 
ing apparel and equipment every year, is organized 
like a huge business and saves John Bull a sum 
greater than the net profits of a full-fledged American 
Trust. 

I went to this Depot one day last autum.n. Before 
I passed through its carefully guarded gates the whirr 
of hundreds of sewing-machines smote my ear. The 
place literally hummed with industry. Freight cars 
were being shunted back and forth in the yards . Army 
trucks loaded with clothing rattled in and out. When 
the luncheon whistle blew thousands of women 
streamed forth to get their dejeuner. I could not help 
realizing that this completely equipped establishment, 
vibrating with energy, grew out of a pile of battle 
salvage and dealt with the by-products of war. 

The Paris Depot — and it is typical in organization 
of all the other large salvage stations — is in charge of a 
once retired colonel, a "dug-out" as they are called, 
who has come back into the service like thousands 
of his comrades. Too old to fight, he is doing his 
bit amid the din and dust of the Waste of War. 
Having encountered the stench of more than one 
Reclamation Depot I can truthfully;^attest to the fact 
that it requires more courage, certainly a stronger 
staying power, to work there ' than to go " over 
the top." 

All the articles to be salvaged are sent in special 
trains straight from the Base Depots behind the lines 
to the Paris Depot. There are two stages of sorting. 
The stuff is first dumped into huge open sheds, where 
a motley assortment of Frenchwomen do the over- 
hauling. Practically all the labour is recruited from 
the immediate neighbourhood of the Depot. It in- 



THE SALVAGE OF BATTLE 121 

eludes the wives, sisters, mothers, grandmothers and 
sometimes great-grandmothers (for the Frenchwoman's 
labours only end with the grave) of soldiers. The 
scene in one of these great sorting-houses is as amusing 
as it is stuffy. You can see a wrinkled Frenchwoman 
with her head done up in a shawl and wearing the tunic 
of a sergeant in the Royal Medical Corps. The old 
lady is usually very proud of the Red Cross on her 
sleeve. Another ancient dame is swathed in the folds 
of an army overcoat, still spattered with the mud of 
Flanders, while the third may be seen attired in the 
closely buttoned-up coat of a member of the Royal 
Flying Corps, which she has exhum.ed from some foul- 
smelling heap of soiled uniforms. 

These women throw the repairable articles into 
portable bins, which are trundled off to the cleaning- 
rooms, whence they go to the various Reclamation 
Divisions. As I have already intimated, the articles 
come straight from the battlefields and, like the wreck- 
age in a Mechanical Transport Casualty Park, are 
eloquent if odorous evidence of the life-and-death 
struggle in which they have figured. Most tragic of 
all the exhibits are the tunics with the tell-tale and 
scorched bullet-holes through which the messengers of 
death have sped so unerringly. 

Every article has a separate department in charge 
of a subordinate officer who has an adequate staff. 
The Paris Depot is unique in the fact that it is the one 
salvage place where every square inch of material that 
comes in is reclaimed or used in some way. The only 
thing not salvaged are the body vermin, which are 
slaughtered. I speak of vermin (no well-regulated 
Salvage Station is complete without them) because the 
Paris Depot specializes in kilts, which are the favourite 
stamping-ground for the little travellers. This is in no 
sense a commentary on the Scotch, who regard clean- 
liness as the next best thing to their proverbial godli- 
ness, but because the many folds in a kilt provide a 
safe and snug retreat for the pests. 



122 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

Aside from the war on vermin — ^they are steamed 
out — the whole kilt renovation is a picturesque per- 
formance. Every Scotch regiment has its own par- 
ticular tartan, which has some distinguishing stripe, 
check or colour arrangement. After the skirt is over- 
hauled it is sorted out by plaids. The sergeant in 
charge — a battle-scarred veteran of the Argyll and 
Sutherland Highlanders — knows every one of the many 
Scotch tartans and piles them up by regiment as they 
come in. 

To get down to practical facts, a new kilt costs on 
an average $5.50. It is repaired, renewed, and sent 
back as good as new for exactly fifty cents. When a 
kilt is not redeemable it is cut up in pieces and used to 
line overcoats. 

No feature of work at the Paris Depot is more ani- 
mated than the reclamation of fur and sheepskin coats 
and leather jerkins worn by the motor transport 
chauffeurs. During the first winter of the war thou- 
sands of these sheepskin coats were used. They soiled 
so easily and became infected with so much vermin 
that the leather jerkin was substituted and has been 
found to be much more practical and sanitary. These 
coats and jerkins are placed in huge wooden drums, in 
which sawdust is thrown generously. The drums are 
rolled by machinery and the dirt and other impurities 
literally dashed out of the garments. It mixes with 
the sawdust and is removed with it. The sawdust is 
then used for fuel. Five thousand of these garments 
can be cleaned every day. The number of leather 
jerkins cleaned during six months last year was 
exactly 298,612, which represented a saving in 
money to the British Government of over $500,000. 
Since the depot was established 700,000 jerkins 
and 300,000 sheepskin coats have been cleaned and 
restored. I might add that the renovated jerkin 
and fur-coat is much sought after by the British 
Tommy because it is softer and more wearable than 
a new garment. 



THE SALVAGE OF BATTLE 123 

Overcoats, or greatcoats as the British call them, 
are a big item at the Paris Depot. During the six 
months preceding my visit exactly 304,193 had been 
redeemed. If the Government had been compelled to 
buy these at first hand and at the Army Vocabulary 
or Catalogue price they would have cost $2,375,000. 
These coats, turned back to the army at one-half this 
price, represented a net money saving, therefore, of 
over $1,000,000, with all overhead cost deducted. 

When an overcoat is beyond repair for a soldier it 
is stained grey or black and served out to the Chinese, 
East Indian or Egyptian Labour Battalions, or to 
the Prisoners of War. 

At this Depot I saw a pile of German topcoats 
captured during a big advance and which were being 
salvaged. Eventually they will cover the backs of 
Hun prisoners, who will get the surprise of their lives 
when perhaps their own garments will be issued to 
them by their foes. Such is the irony of war ! 

The retrieving of clothes (the so-called service dress, 
which includes jackets, trousers and riding-breeches) 
opens up a fresh vista of well-organized salvage. All 
garments are divided into three classes. The first, 
which is designated A, is for garments of the first class 
— that is, uniforms that can be worn by soldiers in 
training or behind the lines. The second class, cata- 
logued as B, includes garments not so desirable, which 
are to be used by men in the trenches, while the third 
class, C, comprises the work clothes for men engaged 
in building roads or in any one of the numerous manual 
labour jobs in field or camp. 

The supervision of this work requires skill of a very 
high order. In charge of the whole job is a Scotch 
civilian who in civil Ufe was head of a huge clothing 
establishment in London. Under him is a corps of 
trained French forewomen who classify the garments. 
With very deft fingers they stitch the class labels on 
the garments as they come by for inspection. 

In this clothing department literally thousands of 



124 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

needles fly every day. The women are paid by piece- 
work, and, being French and thereupon thrifty, they 
are in a constant contest with time. In order to speed 
each other up these models of industry work in friendly 
but highly profitable rivalry. The woman with the 
fattest time-check for the week is indeed the envy of 
all her co-workers. 

The clothing output is in keeping v/ith the produc- 
tion of the other departments. The average number 
of tunics or jackets overhauled during a six months' 
period has been approximately 202,000. If John Bull 
had bought these in the open market at the regulation 
Vocabulary price they would have cost him exactly 
$729,000. By turning them over to the Government 
on a basis of half this price the saving is therefore 
$364,500. With riding-breeches and trousers the 
saving is correspondingly large. 

Another huge item of salvage relates to blankets of 
all kinds. During the six months ending last December 
i>555.8o3 blankets of all kinds were salvaged. Origin- 
ally they represented a cost to the army of $3,889,505. 
Turned in to the Government on usual half-price 
schedule they showed a saving of $1,944,252. Horse 
blankets at the rate of 160,000 every six months, and 
representing a saving of over $300,000 during that 
period alone, are merely an incidental in the Blanket 
Department. Every year for the past two years the 
Paris Depot has salvaged an average of 20,000 pairs 
of gloves, 60,000 cardigans, 130,000 pairs of woollen 
drawers, 120,000 skirts, 41,000 towels and 200,000 
woollen under-vests. 

A complete " follow-up " system is in operation in 
every department. What is called a " Work-room 
Progress Return for the Week " isfissued every Thurs- 
day morning. On this sheet you can see the number 
of garments dispatched, the wages paid and the exact 
cost per garment of every item salvaged. You find 
out, for instance, that the exact cost per garment of 
salvaging 140,000 pairs of pantaloons was 97 



THE SALVAGE OF BATTLE 125 

centimes, or about 20 cents. On the same sheet 
I observed that the cost per garment in wages of 
salvaging 8629 kilts was 297 centimes, or about 60 
cents. So it went. The total of garments of all 
kinds handled was 805,312, while the average wages 
bill for each article was about 75 centimes, or only 
15 cents. 

Now take a final look at the books of the Paris 
Depot and you discover that after deducting all 
expenses, including civilian labour, cost of material, 
coal transport, rent, machinery, and wear and tear, 
the profits for six months ending December 31, 1916, 
were $5,232,540. This average was m.ore than sus- 
tained during 1917, when the total estimated saving 
for the year was about $12,000,000. One unromantic 
but useful item on the income side of this Salvage 
Ledger is rags. Every six months this Depot sells 
not less than 500 tons at $250 a ton. 

Aside from this huge saving in actual money the 
reclamation at the Paris Ordnance Depot — before the 
Government estabUshed its Wool Control — had a very 
decided effect on keeping down the price of wool. If 
the British Government had been required to go into 
the open market and buy the millions of woollen 
garments represented by the number salvaged there 
would have been a very appreciable increase in the 
price of the raw material. 

In Paris you can also see the Rubber Salvage 
Factory. This is run entirely on its own, that is, 
separate and distinct from the Ordnance Depot that 
I have just described. This plant has a peculiar 
significance, because rubber these days is almost as 
valuable as gold, and every ounce of it is carefully 
conserved. The chief items salvaged are thigh boots 
used in the trenches, capes, coats and ground-sheets 
upon which the soldiers sleep. 

The usual story of economy is repeated here. A 
pair of rubber boots that at wholesale cost $10 in 
London is redeemed here for 60 cents ; a salvaged 



126 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

cape that cost $5.00 is turned out as good as new 
for 14 cents. You get a hint of the real saving 
effected in rubber when I tell you that before the 
Paris Rubber Factory was started the British Govern- 
ment got a bid from French Contractors to restore 
thigh boots at $8.00 a pair ! This was the lowest 
bid sent in. 

Last year this Depot salvaged 450,000 rubber boots 
alone. It is in charge of a temporary officer who 
took a three months' course of instruction in one of 
the largest rubber factories in England and who later 
established a school of instruction for the hundreds 
of women employed. 

After clothing, the item of personal wear that 
represents the largest amount of salvage is shoes. 
The British Government not only makes its shoes — 
since the outbreak of the war 24,500,000 pairs have 
been issued — but it has gone into sole-saving on a 
tremendous scale. The shoe salvage, which began 
very modestly at a northern French port, has grown 
to such an extent that the original plant now has a 
huge branch in the East of London. 

Both of these plants have the same system of 
operation. The French establishment, however, has 
elements of distinct human interest. It employs more 
than a thousand French and Belgian girls, who sing 
as they work despite the ungodly smell that comes 
from the battered footgear, plastered as it is with the 
mud of road and trench, and sometimes filled with 
rotten straw or the old socks which the weary marcher 
has stuffed in to ease his aching feet. 

All shoes in the army arrive at the Salvage Depots 
in sacks. When you see the contents dumped out 
you ask, " Is it humanly possible to repair this foul 
mass of tattered leather ? " But it is — and in amazing 
fashion. 

To begin with, the susceptibilities of the average 
Frenchwoman who works with her hands are not 
quite so sensitive as yours. She not only sees salva- 



THE SALVAGE OF BATTLE 127 

tion for a great many of the soiled shoes but a highly 
satisfactory rate of compensation for herself in the 
salvaging. These sorters have nimble fingers and 
keen eyes. In a second they decide what shoes are 
fit for service again and which ones — usually those 
with bad uppers — must be " scrapped." If one shoe 
of a pair is unfit for further use, the other is salvaged, 
and, since the sizes are standardized, it is linked up 
with another odd one and the two go on their way 
of service. 

Shoe reclamation, as you may well imagine, is not 
fragrant. But the Frenchwomen and their sisters 
in the London factory buck up to the job with great 
fortitude. It is all part of the day's work. 

The shoes go through a systematic process of over- 
hauling. One group of women cleans the rough mud 
from the outside, clear out all the foreign matter 
inside and plunge them into great tanks of hot water 
mixed with carbolic acid. Following this bath they 
are scrubbed thoroughly, after which they are dried 
out on racks and coated with warm castor-oil. They 
then pass to a group of Amazons chosen for their 
physical strength, who put the boots on iron lasts 
and tear off the old soles and heels. The shoes are 
now sorted out into sizes by pairs, enter the domain 
of another group who tack on temporarily the correct- 
sized sole before it is permanently nailed on by 
machine. The heel-tipping, toe-plating and hob- 
nailing — these army shoes must be like iron — are 
done by hand. 

Every shoe salvaged is blocked for several hours so 
as to guarantee the exact size. After these blocks or 
lasts are removed the heels are inked, the size is 
stamped on the sole, the boot is again oiled and goes 
into the Store ready to be requisitioned. Like the 
leather jerkins salvaged in Paris, these repaired shoes 
are more popular with the soldiers than new ones for 
the simple reason that they are broken in for wear 
and never pinch the feet. 



128 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

So much for the uppers that can stand new soles 
and heels. What becomes of the uppers that are 
frayed and torn ? Once more Scotch thrift has come 
to the fore and saved the day. When the French 
shoe -salvage shop was first inaugurated all the 
damaged uppers were " scrapped." One day a young 
Aberdeen sergeant, wounded at Mons, and who was 
still standing by the colours by acting as foreman in 
the shoe shop, decided that these uppers should be 
saved. Almost on the spot he invented a machine 
which converts the unrepairable uppers into shoe 
strings. It is a circular knife operated at high speed. 
With great dexterity the French girls hold the upper 
in front of the knife and pull out the lace by the 
rear. 

All told, more than a million pairs of shoes were 
salvaged in 1916, while the record for last year was 
considerably over this number. At the present high 
price of leather the saving runs into millions of 
dollars . 

No detail of British Army Salvage is quite so 
striking in its human aspect as the retrieving of 
automobile spare parts. To observe this we will go 
back to the Empire of Mechanical Transport and 
establish ourselves at one of its largest Base Depots. 
Here, in an immense new concrete factory, which 
represents the last word in time and labour-saving 
construction, you will see one of the strangest sights 
of the war. It is nothing more or less than twelve 
hundred German prisoners, still clad in their fatigue 
uniforms, working at tool, lathe and bench and under 
the foremanship of British sergeant-majors who were 
skilled mechanics before the war. 

The German prisoners represent the combing out 
of the many thousands of Huns now in British hands. 
When it was decided to salvage damaged automobile 
parts there arose at once that most persistent of all 
war questions — Where is the skilled labour to come 
from ? Back in England every available and able- 



THE SALVAGE OF BATTLE 129 

bodied mechanic was geared up to munition-making 
or some other essential war industry. A long-headed 
subordinate under the Director of Transport solved 
the problem by suggesting that artisan German 
prisoners be used. Every batch contained at least 
a few competent workers. He argued that they 
could earn their board and lodging at a lathe much 
better and render a larger service to their keepers 
than by building roads or carrying sacks of oats at the 
Supply Depots. 

The net result was that every Prisoner of War 
Company underwent a strict investigation. It was 
an easy task. These Companies are all in charge 
of their own non-commissioned officers, who, with 
characteristic German efficiency, keep complete records 
of their men and their pre-war occupations. These 
N.C.O.'s were asked to choose the most skilled of their 
colleagues. 

When the factory was completed twelve hundred 
operatives were ready and more than willing to go 
to work. The big, warm, well-lighted and perfectly 
ventilated plant was like heaven after the cold roads, 
dirty ships and draughty warehouses in which many 
of them had toiled since their capture. These prisoners 
proved to be so capable and so industrious that the 
British Government now gives them a money allow- 
ance of three francs a day. This wage is paid in a 
special money printed for this purpose. It is legal 
tender at the Army Canteens, where the Boche 
prisoners can buy cigarettes, jam, beer and their dearly 
beloved sausage. Whether it is due to the extra 
money or the comfort in which they work, one thing 
is certain — the German prisoners on the salvage task 
have made good. Most of them are wise enough to 
realize that, following this unique experience, they will 
not only be alive but much more efficient when the 
war ends. 

At this German-run Shop $25,000 worth of spare 
parts are salvaged every week. When you consider 



130 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

the immense need of automobile and truck spares, the 
great difficulty in securing them and the scarcity of 
steel, you can understand how essential this branch 
of reclamation becomes. 

There are three alternatives in Mechanical Transport 
retrieving. The first is to repair the article as, for 
example, a magneto, and restore it to its original 
form. The second is to melt down the metal and use it 
for raw material. The third is to " scrap " it. All 
" scrap " from the Mechanical Transport goes to the 
Ministry of Munitions. These same rules apply to the 
salvaging of aeroplane engine parts. 

More than 3000 separate motor vehicle parts are 
repaired and issued for immediate use each week. 
They include complete engines, radiators, ball bearings, 
axles and wheels, accessories and fittings Uke lamps, 
batteries, wind screens, magnetos, inner tubes, spark 
plugs and speedometers. Altogether 50,000 spark 
plugs and 2000 magnetos have been reclaimed since the 
work began. The total value of all the salvaged parts 
is more than $2,500,000. 

When a part is beyond repair the material of which 
it is composed is frequently used for the reproduction 
of that " spare " or for the repair of some other. 
Destroyed radiators are melted down to make new 
ones ; burnt - out truck valves are machined into 
car valves ; worn brass bushes are recast and made 
into new ones. About fifteen hundred such parts 
are made and remade every week. Absolutely 
nothing is permitted to go to waste. Even the 
soldier baths used in the repair work come from the 
scrap heap. 

Like nearly every other important war activity, the 
Reclamation of Automobile spare parts is doing its bit 
in the permanent uplift of Industry. Its prize contri- 
bution is a new system of renewing iron or steel parts. 
For the want of something better, this process is called 
Electric Steel Deposition. Any metal part that needs 
building up can be restored to its original form by this 



THE SALVAGE OF BATTLE 131 

ingenious device, which applies the new skin electrically. 
It is really a bath, resembles electro-plating in opera- 
tion and was invented by one of the temporary officers 
stationed at the factory. 

The next chapter in the story of War Salvage takes 
us across the Channel to an ancient Citadel of British 
Ordnance, long the centre of treasured military tradi- 
tions. Here you see an entirely different class of 
work. 

It deals, for one thing, with web and canvas equip- 
ment. This includes packs, haversacks and cartridge 
belts. Originally all these articles were made of 
leather, but as the demands of war grew at such 
tremendous pace the web stuff was substituted for the 
hide, and is proving to be just as efficient and much 
more easily salvaged. 

At this arsenal John Bull's War Laundry goes at 
fuU swing. All the web and canvas equipment is 
washed in huge tubs and darned with machinery. 
It is restored to the men as good as new. 

But it is with leather equipment that the real miracle 
is wrought. Hundreds of saddles come in from the 
front every week. Many of them are shot full of 
holes, and nearly all have the mud of the French 
roads still clinging to them. A new officer's saddle 
represents an outlay of from $50 to $100. In 
this process of salvage it can be remade for several 
doUais. 

So, too, with the leather trench-tool carriers, which 
represent a very considerable item of expense. This 
procedure discloses one of the many illustrations of war 
utility. In the old days before this war, when no one 
thought of husbanding raw material, the British troops 
that went to India and Egypt used huge leather bags to 
contain the spare bedding. They represented acres of 
hides. All these now unnecessary bags have been 
called in and converted into containers for trench 
tools. 

One significant adjunct of the leather restoration 



132 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

is a School for Saddlers, which is operated in con- 
nection with the salvage work. Here the men are 
trained to do repair work in the field. They get 
a complete course of instruction under experienced 
saddlers. In the workshop you see dummy horses 
equipped with every kind of leather kit used in the 
army. Every man must serve his time in the leather 
salvage department, which gives him practical 
experience. When he goes to France or one of the 
other theatres of war he can tackle any sort of leather 
repair job. 

No evidence of the completeness of the army thrift 
crusade is more striking than the treatment of carcass 
cloths. It deals with the large pieces of white linen 
used to cover the carcasses of beef that come from 
South America, the United States and Australia. In 
ordinary times and in ordinary wars these blood-stained 
sheets would have been thrown away as worthless. 
To-day you see them literally cooked down in large 
vats. Their long contact with the beef on the voyage 
has impregnated them with considerable fat. In the 
boiling process this grease comes to the surface, is 
skimmed off and used for what is called " dubbing," 
an excellent leather softener. The rags themselves 
are cut into small pieces and employed for general 
cleaning purposes. This operation, represents salvage 
raised to the nth degree. It is like splitting 
hairs. 

No less drastic is the treatment to which the empty 
flour sacks at Army Bakeries are subjected. Flour 
always clings to its cloth receptacle and it is worth 
reclaiming. The bags, therefore, are dropped into a 
hopper, which revolves at great speed and extracts 
every particle of flour from the goods. The sacks are 
used for various purposes and the flour goes into army 
bread. At one bakery in France the saving in flour 
which would otherwise have been lost in the sack is 
not less than $250 a week. 

While we are on the subject of flour I am reminded 



THE SALVAGE OF BATTLE 133 

of still another unusual piece of salvage. Nearly all 
the ovens at one of the largest Base Bakeries in France, 
in which hundreds of thousands of loaves of bread are 
baked every day, are merely reclaimed Travelling 
Ovens which were originally part of the commissary 
equipment of troops in the field. On account of the 
rough usage they usually show signs of deterioration 
in the outer casing after six months of hard service. 
With this decay comes a decrease in bread output 
because less heat is retained. This proved to be a 
serious handicap in the feeding of troops. It was 
almost impossible to make adequate repairs, and scores 
of the ovens had to be " scrapped." Since each one 
cost from $950 to $1000 the loss to the Public Purse 
was very great. 

A bright young man in the Army Service Corps — 
once more the ever-ready and useful temporary officer 
— ^suggested that these Travelling Ovens could be 
bricked in and made into ground ovens. Two ovens 
were accordingly installed in this way, and they proved 
to be so successful that within six months practicallj'^ 
every oven at the Depot I am describing was built out 
of abandoned field property. 

In the field the travelling oven bums wood. This 
proved to be a very expensive item for the bakeries. 
Coke was substituted, with the result that a great 
saving in fuel cost was effected. As a matter of exact 
fact the saving at this one bakery amounts to $12,000 
every month and this includes the cost of transporting 
the fuel. More than this not a single travelling oven 
has been " scrapped " since the scheme was inaugur- 
ated. To cap the climax of conservation at this 
bakery I have only to add that it is built on reclaimed 
ground. 

The system of salvage extends everywhere . Nothing 
is immune. Every gasolene can is used and re-used 
until it is dilapidated and then the tin is sold. The 
wooden packing-cases are employed until they fall to 
pieces and the scraps become kindling ; hospital 



134 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

dressings are sterilized and sold as cotton waste ; 
small motor parts are sent up to the front in empty 
cigarette and tobacco tins set aside for the purpose ; 
damaged gas helmets are washed in warm water so 
that the chemicals used in them may be retrieved. 
The British soldier is taught that true economy, like 
the wealth that accumulates from pennies, is merely the 
sum of small things. 

The same minute conservation applies to battle 
salvage. Wherever you go in the zones of the armies 
you are likely to see unexploded shells, or " duds " as 
the army calls them. Before economy got its grip on 
the fighting hosts very little attention was paid to 
them. They were allowed to remain in the fields where 
they dropped. Up near a battered village that had 
recently been captured I saw this sign in the midst of 
the ruins : 

" Save Shells. 

They are for Fritz, not for Waste." 

In a French town taken by the British Forces last 
summer and which had been under severe bombard- 
ment for a long time, these signs are posted every- 
where : 

" Pick up a Nail 
AND save a Horse." 

Under these signs are empty biscuit-boxes into 
which the men throw the nails that litter the streets. 
One reason for this injunction, aside from the fact 
that it saves actual nails, is that it prevents many 
an army horse from getting them in his hoofs and 
going lame. 

The salvage of wood — and more especially the 
timber taken out of captured or abandoned Gennan 
trenches — is carried on on a very large scale. Each 
army has a miniature sawmill as part of its equipment. 



THE SALVAGE OF BATTLE 135 

One British Army supplied all its wood needs for six 
months out of the supports and walls obtained from 
German positions. This did not include the thousands 
of poplar trees which had once lined the roadsides 
and which had been slaughtered by the retreatmg 
Huns with characteristic wantonness. 



VIII 
THE ARMY FOOD DRIVE 

THIS panorama of reconstruction, ranging from 
redeemed biscuit-cans to restored nine-inch 
howitzers, is merely the approach to the most 
significant of British salvage processes. For 
now we come to Food Economy, to the conservation 
of the one commodity which more than any other, 
and not even excepting guns and ammunition, will 
help to turn the tide of conflict. At a time when the 
food question is looming large as a crucial war factor 
this work is of supreme interest to the whole American 
people. 

The greatest army waste was with food and, by 
the same token, food is now the basis of the most 
remarkable of all salvage activities. It furnishes the 
lesson in thrift that reaches from the domain of battling 
armies straight into every man's home. It is the 
Universal Theme. 

When John Jones, the average citizen anywhere, 
growls about the high cost of living and contem- 
plates the hole that kitchen extravagance makes in 
his income, he thinks that he is a much-abused person. 
He is struggling with a problem that only affects his 
own household — at most a comparatively few people. 
Consider then the proposition that confronted the 
British Government, with thousands of kitchens and 
millions of men to feed, and you realize the enormous 
dent that waste in cooking and eating made in the 

national pocket-book. 

136 



THE ARMY FOOD DRIVE 137 

His job was to keep his new and growing armies 
fed regardless of consumption. But when the great 
machine of Supply struck its stride and the armies 
were shaken down, one of the first things that bobbed 
up for investigation and possible supervision was the 
question of food outlay. Already the menace of 
famine brooded over the horizon. The submarine 
danger was growing each day ; food ships were going 
down every week ; England was in the grip of a Food 
Controller. The conservation of what men and women 
ate became a matter of vital necessity. 

Of course, food restriction had to begin with the 
civihan. The last person where it could possibly be 
enforced was with the fighting man. Yet no one 
realized more than the Army Chiefs themselves that 
the wastage among the troops was little less than 
criminal. Something had to be done. 

It followed, therefore, that along in the summer of 
1916 a definite movement was inaugurated to conserve 
and control army food consumption, but most of all 
to put a check on the hideous waste that was sacrific- 
ing untold tons of supplies every year. A new wing 
of the Quartermaster-General's Department was set 
up and dedicated to the supervision, maintenance and 
auditing of all Mess Services at home and abroad. It 
was technically called the Quartermaster-General's 
Inspection Service. 

Before this new department had been in operation 
twelve months it had not only brought about drastic 
reforms that saved millions of dollars, but had stimu- 
lated industry, stiffened British independence in one 
very essential branch of munitions making and estab- 
lished a full-fledged and highly profitable business. 

Since the kitchen was the root of the food wastage 
evil it became the goal of a great offensive. First of all 
the army cooks were put under the microscope and 
carefully analysed. Up to this time most of them 
had been drafted from civil Ufe. The majority were 
incompetent. They looked upon Government food 



138 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

as something devised for waste. In this idea they 
were aided and abetted by the soldiers themselves, 
who frequently threw away more of their rations than 
they ate. This grand carnival of extravagance at 
Government expense was doomed to a speedy finish. 

"If we are going to censor the kitchen we must 
begin with the cook," said the new Watch-Dogs of the 
Messes. 

The only way to get efficient cooks was to train 
them, so Schools of Cookery were started in England 
and Scotland. They are in charge of temporary 
officers, all experienced caterers in civil life, who are 
called Instructors in Catering. These schools proved 
to be so successful in the United Kingdom that scores 
were established along the Lines of Communication 
in France at every large Infantry Base Depot. 

The course of instruction lasts for four weeks. For 
fourteen days the candidate attends daily lectures 
on every phase of cooking, from cutting up the sides 
of beef and the reception of uncooked material gener- 
ally to the preparation of a complete meal. He is 
given a course of talks on diet ; he is taught to build 
improvised ovens out of empty biscuit-tins or scrap 
sheets of iron in case he is with a unit that loses its 
baggage train on the m.arch ; he is shown how to 
eliminate waste in every phase of kitchen work. 

After two weeks he is put on the job of cooking food 
for the men at the depot to which his school is attached. 
At the end of his period of instruction he is required 
to pass an examination. If he meets all requirements 
he is given a small card which certifies that he has 
completed the course in the School of Cookery and it 
becomes his passport into the zone of full-fledged Army 
Cooks. Since the establishment of these schools 42,250 
graduate cooks have been turned out. They are the 
Minute Men of Army Food Economy. 

The thoroughness of the cookery course is evidenced 
by many illuminating documents. Typical of these 
is a Manual of Military Cooking and Dietary which is 



THE ARMY FOOD DRIVE 139 

the Cook-Book of the army. The rawest cook in the 
world could produce something eatable by simply 
following its instructions. It shows how every article 
of food used in the army can be used to the best 
advantage and made to do the utmost work in case of 
a breakdown in food transport. Since troops in the 
field are sometimes called upon to impress or buy cattle 
for their sustenance, there is a chapter on the killing, 
skinning and preparation of the carcass. This section 
even goes to the extent of reproducing pictures of 
cattle, sheep and pigs, showing their various edible 
parts in cross-section. Even with the Cook-Book the 
British Army instruction omits no detail. 

There is a series of books dealing with the construc- 
tion of Army Ovens. The cook is not only taught 
how to improvise ovens out of scraps, but to keep his 
kitchen tools in good repair. 

A complete words-of-one-syllable culinary literature 
has been prepared for the Army Cook. One of these 
books is called The Cookhouse and Simple Recipes. 
It is packed with helpful hints on how to keep the 
Cookhouse sanitary ; how to build fires ; how to cut 
up bread, cheese and cake with the least possible 
waste ; how to make the most of every ration (that 
is, make sausages, rissoles and other combinations 
out of leavings) ; and how to manufacture improvised 
bread-slicers and potato-peelers. It is really a full 
course in Domestic Science. 

One important feature of the book deals with the 
soldiers' diet sheet. Under the new Army Food 
Regulations every Master Cook is required to make 
out a Weekly Diet Sheet which announces the com- 
plete menu for the men. It is posted conspicuously 
in the Cookhouse and Mess-Rooms every Sunday 
morning. Its chief advantages are that the cooks 
know what to prepare from day to day, while the 
men know what they are going to have. It facilitates 
the ration indent, tends toward economy and helps 
to ensure a variety of food. 



140 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

The Instructors in Catering are very important 
Army individuals. A Flying Squadron is constantly 
on the go, making unexpected inspections of Cook- 
houses. In their operations they are akin to the 
Inspectors in the Mechanical Transport, and, like them, 
are the terrors of the slacker and the sloven. 

The results of every inspection are reported on a 
form which is specially prepared for this purpose. 
It records the name of the unit, its station, its average 
daily feeding strength, how the food is stored, whether 
the Master Cook is trained or needs training, and 
finally if a so-called stock-pot is in use. The stock- 
pot is a very important first aid to army food saving. 
It is usually a huge kettle in which all surplus and 
eatable meat and bones are| dumped, and which 
becomes the sanctuary of the justly famous army stew. 

This constant supervision of cooking has not only 
reduced waste but enabled the British Army to curtail 
its rations considerably during 1917. Two ounces a 
day have been pinched off the allowance of bread 
stuffs except in the cases of soldiers under nineteen, 
who have the prize appetites of the Service, The salt 
ration has been cut down by one-fourth of an ounce 
per man a day, and a considerable saving has been 
effected in the consumption of tea. All these items 
represent a saving in actual cash of approximately 
$20,000,000 a year, and the economies in this direction 
have just begun. 

Although this whip-hand over waste reduced the 
ration and eliminated extravagance in the preparation 
of food there was still an enormous sacrifice in the 
kitchen. Every day in the hundreds of army cook- 
houses at home and abroad the leavings from plate, 
dining-table, pot and skillet were dumped indiscrimi- 
nately into the garbage heap. These by-products 
of the army ration represented, in the course of a year, 
thousands of tons of bone and fat which had a perfectly 
good and profitable commercial use. So the Quarter- 
master-General's Department bestirred itself to utilize 



: THE ARMY FOOD DRIVE 141 

all this waste, with the result that it has built up a huge 
industry that conveys one of the most useful lessons of 
the war. 

Two definite causes contributed to this really re- 
markable conversion of refuse into money. The first 
was the daily reminder in the shape of garbage that 
had to be burned. The second and more important 
dealt with that mainstay of all army advance — 
Munitions. As long ago as 1915 England realized that 
she was paying an excessive price for glycerine, which 
is one of the essentials in the making of high explosives. 
The soap-makers in the United Kingdom notified the 
Government that owing to the abnormal price for 
glycerine — it was $1250 a ton, against the pre-war 
price of $250 a ton — ^the American soap-makers were in 
a position to sell their product abroad at a price with 
which the British manufacturers could not compete. 

In order to understand the connection between 
soap-making and glycerine (from which nitro-glycerine 
is made) you must first know that animal fat produces 
soap. One of the by-products of soap-making, in turn, 
is the much needed and now highly prized glycerine. 
One hundred pounds of fat produces ten pounds of 
glycerine. Before the war and when there was only 
a normal demand for high explosives, glycerine had 
to be content to occupy a place in the industrial 
catalogue as a mere by-product. Since the war the 
tail wags the dog, and glycerine is as rare and almost 
as precious as gold. Now you can see why the 
American soap-maker could afford to sell his product 
for a song in the United Kingdom. 

No wonder the British soap-makers were up in 
arms. They made it very clear to their Government 
that, if the state of affairs that I have just described 
continued, the manufacture of soap at home would 
have to stop and the Government would be entirely 
dependent upon the American market for its supply 
of glycerine and at an excessive price. 

The British Government at once got busy. It 



142 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

prohibited the importation of soap from the United 
States, and decided to collect all the fat from the army 
camps and use it for the double purpose of producing 
British-made soap and British glycerine for British 
shells. Here you have one of the many side-lights on 
that growing self-sufficiency of the Empire which will 
be a tremendous weapon when the war is over. 

An agreement was entered into between the Army, 
the Government and the soap-makers. The Army 
agreed to turn over all the by-products of camp and 
kitchen to the soap-makers, and the soap-makers, on 
their part, undertook to supply the Ministry of 
Munitions with all the glycerine extracted from the fat 
at the pre-war price of $250 a ton. The scale of prices 
for all refuse would depend upon the market varia- 
tions and would be fixed each month by a group 
of manufacturers known as the Committee for the 
Purchase of Army Camp Refuse. This Committee 
is headed by Mr. John W. Hope, one of the soap 
kings of England and a business man of wide and 
practical experience. 

Now began the great mobilization of waste products. 
It was easier said than done. Here was the problem. 
In thousands of camps the grease and bones were 
dumped out every day. Obviously all this litter could 
not be conveyed to England. It had to be reduced 
to fat on the spot. 

Once more a difficult technical proposition was put 
up to the Army, who met the emergency with customary 
resource and ingenuity. A chemist in the Royal Army 
Medical Corps, Captain Ellis by name, who was an 
Assistant Inspector of Catering and who had been 
an expert chemical adviser before the war, invented 
an apparatus known as the Ellis Field Fat-Extracting 
Plant. In this process the rough fat and bones 
collected from the camps are treated in boiling tanks 
through which superheated steam is passed. The 
fat is run out, put into barrels or kegs and dispatched 
to England to the Committee for the Purchase of 



THE ARMY FOOD DRIVE 143 

Army Camp Refuse. Altogether eight of these plants 
are in operation in France alone. There are half a 
dozen more in England. They are usually attached 
to an important Infantry Base where cooking is 
conducted on a very large scale. 

These Fat Plants are the wholesale establishments. 
In order to round up every available scrap of refuse 
all units in the field, no matter how small, become 
sources of supply and represent the retail end. There 
units render the suet skimmings or refuse down to 
what is called dripping, which is sent to Collecting 
Depots in old biscuit and tea tins. These Collecting 
Depots are at smaller Bases, where the erection of a 
plant is not justified. If the dripping is properly 
rendered down it is dispatched at once to England. 
If not it is sent on to a Field Extracting Plant for 
further treatment. 

There is a complete system of accounting. The 
collection of fat from the armies in the field is organized 
as follows. The rendered dripping is handed in to 
officers at Railheads, who give a receipt for the weight 
received. Attached to this receipt is a voucher for 
the cash due to the unit. This voucher is legal tender 
at any army canteen. The money is used by the 
men to buy additional luxuries such as fresh vegetables 
or fruit. Often the proceeds of their kitchen economy 
are devoted to the purchase of utensils to improve 
the Mess arrangements of the unit, such as extra 
dishes, cruets and bacon-cutters. 

When dripping is sent direct to the Fat-Extracting 
Plant an account is opened for each unit and it is 
credited with every instalment which it sends in. 
Here, as in the field, vouchers are attached to every 
receipt and they can be handed in at the canteens 
as payment for supplies . 

I visited one of these Field Fat-Extracting Plants 
Somewhere in France. It was located near an im- 
portant Supply Depot where thousands?; of men were 
camped. It proclaimed its presence long before I 



144 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

reached it. It was like approaching Packingtown in 
Chicago when the wind was in the wrong direction. 
In charge was a young lieutenant who before this war 
had encountered nothing stronger in the way of 
odours than the breeze from the Thames. Now he 
laboured in the midst of a frightful stench. He had 
been wounded twice, as his two sleeve stripes showed, 
and might have had a soft desk job at home. But 
he was willing to stick it out on a task that he frankly 
admitted was much more trying than fighting Germans. 

The plant was as busy as it was smelly. Every 
now and then a big army motor-truck would rattle 
up with a load of garbage. Special containers are 
used which bear the number of their army unit. Off 
to one side was a swill warehouse. All the leavings 
of the rendering plant, together with accumulated 
potato peelings, are sold to the French farmers for 
hog food at fifty cents a barrel. The business at this 
particular place was so extensive that a book-keeper 
was constantly employed to keep track of its affairs. 

The conversion of actual meat refuse into fat for 
soap-making is only one phase of the utilization of 
waste products. Bones compete with drippings 
in salvage importance. After all the fat is boiled out 
of ^ the bones — one hundred pounds of bone produce 
ten pounds of fat — the remains are used for the manu- 
facture of tooth and nail brushes, while the small 
pieces are crushed and sold for fertilizer. 

Even the scraps from the soldiers' plates are utilized. 
When you go to an Army Mess Hall you will observe 
that every soldier files out plate in hand. Outside 
the door he stops at a tub and scrapes all the leavings 
on the dish into it. These leavings are dried and 
chopped up for chicken food. Bread crumbs are 
treated the same way. 

The system which assembles Army Refuse is as 
complete as scientific business methods can devise. 
In every Army Cookhouse hangs a comprehensive 
chart issued by the Committee for the Purchase of 



THE ARMY FOOD DRIVE 145 

Army Camp Refuse, which shows how recoveries of 
fat are made. From this chart the cook can see how 
to cut off suet, trimmings and so-called " butcher's 
fat " from the raw material ; how to get cracklings, 
skimmings and all scraps from the processes of cooking ; 
how to retrieve sausage skins, bacon rind, the marrow 
from bone after the food is served — in fact, how to 
utilize every possible square inch of food that passes 
through his hands. This economy has almost become 
a vice, because an Army Order had to be issued last 
September requesting cooks not to pare down their 
trimmings for glycerine fat too close. The actual food 
supply was sometimes impaired through over-zeal. 
This resulted from competition between units to 
secure high figures in the monthly by-products return. 

The cos^t of setting up and operating the Fat-Extract- 
ing Plants is obtained from a Central Fund created by 
retaining a small difference between the price obtained 
for the fat from the Committee for the Purchase of 
Army Camp Refuse and the price paid the Units 
for the waste material. This fund is administered by 
the Inspection Department of the Quartermaster- 
General's Service. Out of it is paid the cost of erection 
of factories, labour and the maintenance of the various 
Collecting Depots. 

I can give you no better idea of the results of these 
salvage operations than to say that last year enough 
glycerine was obtained from army fat to provide the 
propellent for 18,000,000 eighteen-pound shells. This 
means that approximately 1800 tons of glycerine were 
obtained from the refuse of the camp kitchens. This 
glycerine, sold to the Ministry of Munitions at the pre- 
war price of $250 a ton, meant a net saving of $1000 a 
ton, or exactly $1,800,000. In addition to this the 
soldier got the benefit of many luxuries, which made 
him much more contented and therefore more efficient. 

The gross income from the sale of by-products alone 
last year was $3,940,000. Add to this the saving 
in the cost of glycerine and the value of the reduction 
10 



146 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

in rations brought about by the supervision of cooking 
and other economies and you get a total saving esti- 
mated to be not less than $30,000,000. A larger 
phase of this conservation lies in the fact that it enabled 
a considerable amount of food to be released to the 
general public. At the same time, the army and navy 
got all its soap free of charge, which is part of the 
contract with the Committee for the Purchase of 
Army Refuse. At Salonika the British Army not 
only renders all its fat, but conducts its own soap 
factory. 

So successful and widespread is the army refuse 
business that a company had to be formed to run it. 
It is under the jurisdiction of the Army Council, and 
is called the Army Waste Products Company Ltd. 
It is organized and operated just like any British 
Corporation. The Quartermaster-General to all the 
Forces, Lieutenant- General Sir John Cowans, is 
President, while Major-General F. W. B. Landon, 
Chief Inspector of the Quartermaster-General's Ser- 
vices, is Vice-President and General Manager. Al- 
though the capital is only seven shillings — about 
$1.75 — it does a business in all its branches of many 
millions of dollars a year. It could pay dividends 
that would compare favourably with some of the 
" melons " cut by successful American concerns. 

More important perhaps than these imposing profits 
is the permanent lesson to every man who touches the 
salvage system. He realizes an asset that will be a 
bulwark for his future. He will go back to peace 
not only richer in experience but more frugal in habit. 
The army cook, for instance, disciplined in economy 
with Government property, will instinctively husband 
his own. It will establish the precedent for his whole 
family. 

This contact with conservation is full brother to 
that other and equally constructive preachment em- 
bodied in the lesson of the War Savings Certificate, 
which has taught the Briton to think in terms of 



THE ARMY FOOD DRIVE 147 

thrift and which is now happily becoming a part of 
American economic life. 

The whole British Army Salvage Scheme emphasizes 
the need of a Junk and Refuse Dictator in the United 
States, for a control of Salvage would save it untold 
millions and help to shorten the war. It also points 
the world a way to a retrenchment in money and 
materials that is in many respects the most valuable 
dividend yet declared by the Busmess of War. 

War is not all Waste. 



IX 
THE WARES OF WAR 

WHEREVER you journey in the zones of 
the armies you cannot fail to be impressed 
with the almost ceaseless movement of 
ammunition trains. Day and night the 
lorries and wagons rumble up and down the beaten 
highways, hauling the deadly freight which [is as 
precious and priceless as food. Turn from the road 
and your eye lights upon the familiar white and blue 
flag which indicates the presence of the ammunition 
" dump." 

After the Commissariat the question of shell supply 
is the most important in the war. Preponderance of 
munition resource gave Germany her first great ad- 
vantage in the conflict. It took Great Britain more 
than a year to catch up. 

Ammunition provides one of the stupendous items 
of war expenditmre both in material and money. This 
is a war of ammunition. In the first battle of the 
Somme, for example, more shells were expended in 
a week than were used in the whole Boer War. The 
appetites of the iron mouths are never appeased. 

The average visitor to the war regards the provision 
of shells and guns as a matter of course. But, like 
Supply and Transport, it is a perfectly organized, 
well-oiled and admirably conducted annexe of the 
Business of War — just another cog in a marvellous 
machine. 

With this phase of operation you leave the Domain 

148 



THE WARES OF WAR 149 

of the Quartermaster-General and enter the Bailiwick 
of the Master-General of Ordnance, whose task is to 
provide arms of all descriptions, guns and gun carriages, 
ammunition, vehicles which are mainly mechanical 
transport, and telephone and telegraph stores. The 
principal items, however, are guns and ammunition. 
Instead of looking to the Surveyor-General of Supply 
to stock his grim shelves, as is the case with food and 
general equipment, he is alhed with the Minister of 
Munitions, who is the Master Merchandiser of the 
Wares of War. 

Again you have the spectacle of a titanic agency 
of supply. It is as far-flung as the war itself. It 
ranges from the factories of the United States and 
Canada to the controlled estabhshments of England 
and Scotland where milUons of men and women, 
recruited from all ranks, labour day and night in the 
eternal effort to feed the hungry maws of gun, trench 
mortar and rifle. As Britain's home sources of shell 
supply have grown she has become less dependent 
upon her overseas AlUes. The Ministry of Munitions 
to-day is almost self-sufficient. 

No evidence of England's war expansion is more 
eloquent or illuminating than the rise of this stupendous 
engine of destruction. From a small room in White- 
hall in London where a few devoted engineers, ship- 
builders, chemists and inventors rallied around Lloyd 
George in 1 915, it has grown into a vast business which 
operates directly or indirectly more than four thousand 
factories, and employs in its inspection work alone 
an army almost equal to the entire First Seven Divisions 
— England's regular Army — which rushed to the reUef 
of Belgium. It has been the largest contributing 
factor to England's industrial development ; it has 
enriched science, stimulated research ; it will be 
Britain's mechanical bulwark when the war is over 
and the bloodless trade conflicts of peace begin. 

With ammunition, as with every other detail, this 
war has smashed all precedents and estabUshed 



150 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

amazing standards of scope and output. In the Boer 
War the 47 gun was the heaviest employed ; in this 
war the armies in the field use 12- and 15-inch 
howitzers that weigh, with their carriages, more than 
two hundred tons. In the Boer War 500 rounds of 
ammunition was considered a large supply for a gun ; 
to-day no gun would regard itself well supplied with 
less than 5000. Now you can get some idea of the 
demands made upon shell factories. 

You get a further conception of ammunition needs 
when I go on to say that leaving out rifle and revolver 
cartridges, which must be suppUed by the hundreds 
of millions, the Ministry of Munitions is called upon to 
produce shells for twelve different calibres of cannon, 
ranging from the 3-inch anti-craft guns — the 
" Archies " — to 15-inch howitzers. Not only must 
these guns be fed incessantly, but an immense reserve 
is absolutely necessary in every theatre of war. This 
means that the " M.G.O." — as the Master-General of 
Ordnance is called — is required to have his own fleet 
of ammunition ships whose crews are carefully trained 
in the handling of high explosives. In some of the 
compartments of these ships the workers wear felt 
slippers in order to minimize the danger of ex- 
plosion. 

In any study of shell supply the first and most 
natural question is : How does the Ministry of Muni- 
tions know what and how much to make ? With 
food this task is comparatively easy. The Quarter- 
master-General is told how many men must be fed 
everywhere, and since there is a definite ration it 
becomes a simple matter of mathematics. 

With ammunition the operation is almost identical. 
Here, as with Supply, the organization is carefully 
charted and diagrammed. At the War Office, 4n addi- 
tion to the Master-General of Ordnance, is a Director 
of Artillery, who is the link between Supply and 
Demand. He has an opposite number in the field 
known as the Director of Ordnance Services, who is 



' THE WARES OF WAR 151 

established at General Headquarters in France or at 
the headquarters of the other overseas armies. 
(The Director of Ordnance Services is the apex of 
a pyramid which extends to every army in the field. 
His voice and interpreter is a Deputy Director of 
Ordnance Services, who, in turn, is represented by 
Assistant Deputies of Ordnance Services. Carrying 
the service straight into the zones of the fighting 
armies you find that with each Division there is a 
Deputy Assistant Director of Ordnance Services, or 
" Dados " as he is commonly known. He corresponds 
to the Senior Supply Officer who makes the food 
demands for a Division. 

The Director of Artillery at the War Office is in 
constant touch by telephone and telegraph with the 
Director of Ordnance Services at G.H.Q. He knows 
how many guns are in commission, and just what they 
need. Each gun, big or little, can only be fired a 
certain number of times during every twenty-four 
hours. Provision therefore is made according to these 
needs. In the case of a big push, which is always 
inaugurated with an immense bombardment, advance 
orders are sent in from the field : the munition factories 
are speeded up and tremendous reserves are accumu- 
lated. When the iron dogs are unleashed they can 
bark with unrestrained fury. 

It was not always so. During that first terrible 
twelve months of war when German preparedness took 
its frightful toll in Belgium and Flanders the British 
guns were well-nigh impotent. Shells had to be hus- 
banded just as sugar was hoarded a few years later. 
But all that was part of the unhappy task. Thanks to 
the patriotism of British labour, and particularly to 
that million of women workers, England to-day has a 
surplus of ammunition, some of which has been gener- 
ously placed at the disposal of her Allies, including the 
United States. 

To visualize this colossal business of shell supply let 
me take you for a brief visit to the greatest of British 



152 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

arsenals — oldest in point of service, and whose per- 
sonnel alone affords some idea of the expansion in 
munitions labour. In August 1914 the staff consisted 
of 10,866 persons. Now it amounts to 73,571. The 
number of women employed in 1914 was 125 ; to-day 
it is close on to 25,000. In order to provision a part 
of these workers thirty-five canteens have had to be 
established. 

At this great arsenal only components of shells are 
produced. Each shell, it is interesting to know, is the 
sum of many items. The cartridges are made in one 
place, tubes and fuses in another, propellants in a third. 
All these parts must be " married," as the phrase goes, 
into a complete round. This " marriage " is consum- 
mated at the National Filling Factories, of which there 
are seventeen throughout Great Britain. Their capa- 
city is considerably more than 50,000 tons a week. 
This output would cover five acres of space and would 
require 5000 railway trucks for transport. 

Each one of these Filling Factories has a specific 
task. Some fill shells ; others fill cartridges, while 
still others assemble the i8-pounder ammunition. 
Four of them fill fuses and tubes exclusively. 

The great arsenal to which I have referred happens 
to be a combination of all ammunition activities in 
that it produces component parts and fills. Here you 
see acres of shells of every kind and description. The 
deadly high explosives — " H.E." — are always yellow 
in colour and are handled with much greater care 
than any other type. The field-gun shells are black. 
The large ones are in wicker baskets to expedite 
handling, and look like jugs of death. 

An ammunition supply Depot is something like the 
great Base Supply Depots operated by the Quarter- 
master-General. Everything is s^^stematized. The 
munitions are kept in huge storehouses. The officer 
in charge of each one of these structures is required to 
keep what is called Storehouse Tally, which is a com- 
plete and up-to-the-minute record of supplies received 



THE WARES OF WAR 153 

and issued. Thus he can tell at any time just how 
many shells of ever}^ variety he has on hand. Since 
there is always the hazard of air-raids, each battalion of 
shells is safeguarded by piles of sand-bags. The pre- 
cautions against fire are most stringent. The penalty 
against smoking is everything but death. 

The same system follows the ammunition from the 
moment it leaves the storehouse or the Filling Factory 
to the ship, where it is loaded for France, Salonika, 
Egypt, Mesopotamia or Africa. Indeed, a record is 
kept of every shell until it goes into the gun. 

The system of railway transport in England is typical 
of the completeness of the organization. For every 
railway truck there is an army truck card which con- 
tains a description of the stores, the number of shells, 
the hour loaded and the destination. A duplicate of 
this truck card is kept at the storehouse ; another goes 
with the car as a voucher. It is tacked on the outside 
so that the receiving officer can check up the freight at 
once. A complete ammunition train consists of fifty 
trucks. More than one thousand trucks are loaded 
every day, and there is a continuous procession of 
trains rushing dail}^ toward the three ports in the south 
of England, where every night the ships depart with 
their cargoes of destruction. Each ship carries a 
manifest of its freight in duplicate. One of these 
is retained by the receiving officer in France or 
elsewhere, while the other goes back as a receipt for 
goods received. 

Coincident with the departure of the ammunition 
ship a telegram is sent to the Director of Ordnance 
Service at G.H.Q. apprising him of the shipment. This 
wire is in no way an advice for shipping purposes, but 
is sent to give the D.O.S. immediate information about 
what he is receiving. Here again you get illuminating 
evidence of the value of knowledge in warfare. As in 
the supply of food, the whole aim is to give the fighting 
man immeditae intelligence of what is being done for 
him. It is the antidote to worry. Long experience 



154 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

has proved that anxiety about supplies in war is far 
more deadly than enemy bullets. 

With ammunition distribution you find another 
interesting parallel with food. Some of the ships 
carrying munitions use the French ports that supply 
the Northern Lines of Communication, while others 
make the southern ports for the Southern Lines. Im- 
mediately upon their arrival across the Channel the 
shells are landed, loaded into trucks and distributed 
to the various base and field Supply Depots under 
instructions from General Headquarters, 

In France there are six immense ammunition 
depots, three on the Northern Line and three on the 
Southern. Each Depot keeps a supply of 35,000 tons 
of ammunition. This includes about 17,000 tons of 
boxed ammunition, 14,000 tons of heavy ammunition 
and 3700 tons of trench warfare stores and small-arm 
ammunition. 

Ammunition is issued at each Depot and consigned 
to certain Railheads in the field, which become, in turn, 
the distributing points for the fighting units. These 
Railheads have a certain number of Army and Corps 
dumps to supply. I might state right here that any 
accumulation of ammunition in the field is called a 
dump. The word is self-explanatory. A dump may 
be an open field by the roadside, where the shells are 
stacked up on boards and covered with heavily 
camouflaged tarpaulins, or a temporary storehouse. 
The enemy would rather bombard an ammunition 
depot than successfully raid a trench. There is always 
a heavily armed guard at these dumps, and they in- 
variably fly a white flag with a square blue field. This 
flag is the emblem of what is known as the Divisional 
Ammunition Column. 

The transport of ammunition in the field is a very 
difficult proposition. From Railhead to dump the 
three- and five-ton motor-trucks are used. They are 
always marked with a white shell and take precedence 
over all other traffic. From the dump up to the firing- 



THE WARES OF WAR 155 

line our old and tried friend, the Horse Transport, is 
the carrier. As with food, these horse and mule- 
drawn vehicles are the patient and unswerving link 
with actual battle. They usually go up at night when 
the way is dark and full of troubles. In the first 
battle of the Somme and in Haig's great push in 
Flanders last November, when the weather remained 
persistently pro-German and the roads became so 
nearly impassable that even Horse Transport could 
not be used, thousands of shells had to be sent up to 
the front on the backs of mules and horses, and were 
even carried by hand. 

Some shells, however, are so huge that they require 
mechanical transport. A whole system of tractors 
is engaged solely in the work of conveying howitzer 
ammunition from Railhead to battery. In some 
instances Hght railways are used, I cite these facts 
merely to show how infinite is the variety of specialized 
labour imposed upon the armies in the field. 

The item of gun supply does not call for any elaborate 
explanation. Just as a lathe is a lathe, a gun is a 
gun. The Master-General of Ordnance is charged 
with the task of renewing old ordnance and supplying 
new cannon. Except where a gun is absolutely put 
out of commission by a shell it is salvaged, and in 
80 per cent of cases is restored to service. Through- 
out the zones of fighting you find so-called Gun Parks, 
where you see row after row of guns of all calibres 
with limbers and other equipment ready to take their 
place in the battle-fine. . Once more the reserve supply 
is the insurance against disaster. 

Ordnance in this war means a great deal more than 
shells and guns. As a matter of specific fact it includes 
not less than eight thousand items, which range from 
a nail to a fire-engine. They come under the head of 
what is technically known as Ordnance Stores. The 
provision of this well-nigh incredible mass of commo- 
dities is under the general supervision of the Quarter- 
master-General, whose chief Aide is the official 



156 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

known as the Director of Equipment and Ordnance 
Stores. 

If you want to get some notion of what Ordnance 
Stores means, just take a trip to Woolwich and look 
at the so-called Ordnance Stores Museum. Here you 
will find a sample of every one of the eight thousand 
items included in the Vocabulary, which is the Bible 
of Ordnance Stores Supply. Every one of these items 
is sealed with the red War Ofhce seal, which means 
that it is a pattern and has been officially adopted by 
the army. It ranges from camp-chairs to field com- 
munion sets. Contractors who want to compete for 
army bids come here and examine the models. Some- 
times a model is sent to a local Chamber of Commerce 
located in a city which happens to be a centre of a 
manufacturing district. 

The matter of Ordnance Stores in the army is, of 
course, vitally important. In order to prevent omis- 
sion of any article, v/hat is called a Mobilization Stores 
Table is provided for each unit, whether it be an 
infantry battahon, battery of light or heavy artillery 
or hospital corps. This Table serves as a record of 
the war equipment of the unit. It itemizes every 
article needed by the unit. In the concrete case of 
an infantry battahon it includes such articles as bags, 
mess tins, whistles, pistols, wire cutters, web equip- 
ment, which includes belts, braces, haversacks, packs 
and carriers for cartridges and entrenching tools, 
bugles, drums, axes, buckets, cooking utensils, ropes, 
horse blankets, shovels, harness, saddles, compasses, 
blankets, bicycles, stretchers, arms, clothing and 
scores of other commodities too numerous to mention. 

Despite this immense number of stores a complete 
record is kept of every item. The Quartermaster of 
the unit is held responsible for issue and consumption. 

The provision of these ordnance stores is in itself 
a fuU-sized job. It is as completely and as scientifically 
organized as the contracting and purveying of food. 
In fact it is a repUca of the system adopted by the 



THE WARES OF WAR 157 

Surveyor-General of Supply, and which has been 
described in a previous chapter. The specifications 
are printed and sent to prospective bidders. Once 
the contract is made the goods automatically pass 
under an incessant scrutiny. This is technically 
known as Inspection of Ordnance Stores. 

The inspectors are called Viewers. They are 
civiUans drafted from mill and factory who are the 
best experts available. Each Viewer has a specialty. 
It may be iron, wood or wool. At Woolwich, for 
example, which is the centre of an extensive inspec- 
tion district, there is an admirable system of keeping 
tab on the work. Each inspector is indicated by a 
flag, which is the colour of the type of work he inspects. 
A red flag indicates iron work ; the blue is wood, and 
so on. Each man's name is on his flag. If the Chief 
Viewer wants to know where John Jones, wood in- 
spector, is, he simply looks at a huge chart on the 
wall and finds his flag. If John Jones is inspecting at 
Manchester the flag will be stuck in the circle marked 
" Manchester." If he has need of John Jones's services 
in a neighbouring city he can at once assign him to the 
contract without delay. It is the science of business 
as having just one more manifestation in the work of 
the war. 



X 
A VISIT TO SIR DOUGLAS, HAIG 

FOR days I had run the gamut of the guns ; 
ranged the whole long British battle-line 
until the world seemed a chaos of trench 
and traffic shaken by a deadly din. Sud- 
denly I came to a quiet backwater in this whirlpool of 
war. 

It was a modest chateau well off the beaten road, 
so screened by French poplars that its quietude sug- 
gested the aloof and untroubled days of peace. The 
red flag that fluttered at the gate, the presence of more 
than the usual number of sentries, the distant rumble 
of artillery, were the only external evidences that this 
secluded house which basked in the winter sun was 
linked with the world's greatest conflict. 

Yet amid those friendly trees is the nerve centre 
of the mightiest Enghsh mihtary machine ever 
created ; from its pleasant drawing-room that looks 
out upon an Old- World garden are issued the com- 
mands at which milHons of armed men leap to action ; 
towards it countless anxious hearts turn every day 
for the tidings of cheer or despair. For here are the 
headquarters of Field-Marshal Sir Douglas Haig, 
Commander-in-Chief of aU the British Armies in 
France and Flanders. 

I have seen army and corps headquarters far more 
pretentious than the domicile that shelters the chieftain 
of them all. It is characteristic of the silent soldier 

who literally wields the power of life and death that 

158 




From a Draiving hy Frauds Dodd 
FlEl.n-MAKSHAI, SIR DOUGLAS HATG^, 



A VISIT TO SIR DOUGLAS HAIG 159 

the seat of his fateful authority should be like the 
man himself — simple, dignified, impressive. You get a 
hint of Haig before you see him. 

The environment of the Commander-in-Chief is 
strongly suggestive of his conduct of the war. Before 
war became a thing of precise science the headquarters 
of an army head seethed with all the picturesque 
details so common to pictures of martial Hfe. Couriers 
mounted on foam-decked horses dashed to and fro ; 
the air was vibrant with action ; the fate of battle 
showed on the face of the humblest orderly. 

But to-day headquarters are totally different. 
Although army units have arisen from thousands to 
millions of men, and fields of operations stretch from 
sea to sea, and more ammunition is expended in a 
single engagement than was employed in entire wars 
of other days, absolute serenity prevails. It is only 
when your imagination conjures up the picture of 
flame and fury that lies beyond the horizon Une that 
you get a thrill. 

An occasional motor-car driven by a soldier-chauffeur 
chugs up the gravel road to the chateau, and from it 
emerge earnest-faced officers whose visits are usually 
brief. Neither time nor words are wasted when 
myriad lives hang in the balance and an empire is at 
stake. Inside and out there is an atmosphere of quiet 
confidence, born of unobtrusive efficiency. 

This is due, first, to the fact that it is the Haig way 
of doing things ; second, to the consideration that war 
now is a vast and well-oiled industry, carried on with 
such perfect organization that to the American 
trained to study the mechanics of huge corporations 
in his own country it seems strangely famihar. Make 
the most elemental comparison and you see at once 
how close the parallel is. 

That modest chateau, hemmed in by poplars, is 
nothing more or less than the executive office of the 
deadhest but best organized business in the world. 
It houses the mainspring of the most colossal system 



i6o THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

of merchandising that commerce has ever known. 
Strip away the glamour and you have merely mer- 
chandising with men instead of goods. You have- 
every consecutive process of business evolution. 
Instead of representing the conversion of pig-iron 
into motors you have the translation of raw human 
material into expert fighting men. 

The Commander-in-Chief bears the same relation 
to the carrpng on of war that a master sales manager 
bears to the dissemination of a product. His task 
is to deploy his output where it can hit the hardest, 
and on the success of his alignment his cause stands 
or falls. 

What would represent profit in trade is here ex- 
pressed in terms of advance ; in territory gained. 
The highest dividend is victory, the permanent after- 
math is peace and liberty. 

Study Haig and the British Army at close range 
and you find that War is Work — the most difficult, 
desperate and unremitting labour that the hand and 
brain of man ever devised. The price of freedom, 
as fought for on the battlefields of Europe to-day, is 
infinite but organized toil knit by sacrifice and fed 
by patriotism. 

To write of Sir Douglas Haig is to write not only 
of the conspicuous military leadership, but also of 
the kindling response that an untrained and un- 
disciplined people made to organized and long-pending 
aggression. 

Ever since the beginning of the present war the 
average American has constantly asked himself : 
" How is a war involving millions of men and extend- 
ing over an immense area conducted ? " He is baffled 
by problems of transport and communication, demand 
and supply. Shells are no respecters of hunger or 
sleep. He marvels that armies of two nations speaking 
different languages and operating in separate spheres 
can co-operate and co-ordinate. All this and much 
more piles up the huge question : " How is it done ? " 



A VISIT TO SIR DOUGLAS HAIG i6i 

You find much of the answer crystallized in one 
word — team-work. It is the essence of the formula 
which expresses the success of Sir Douglas Haig and 
explains the advance of the British Army. If such 
a thing were possible you would find it emblazoned 
over the doorway of that unassuming headquarters 
chateau " somewhere in France." 

Thus the get-together idea, which in war spells the 
brotherhood of the firing line, lies at the very root of 
all that the British khakied host has achieved on the 
Western front. Its guide, compass and friend is the 
Commander-in-Chief. At his disposal are placed the 
human battalions ; all the materials with which to 
feed and fight. Up to him is put squarely the task 
of translating these units into victory. 

To get at the procedure you must first have some 
revelation of the man, his personality and his methods. 
In them are reflected the whole process by which 
battle is made. Know them and 5^ou learn what 
costly and actual experience alone can teach — that 
the path of glory is paved with innumerable un- 
romantic and lustreless details, and that the soldier 
who goes forth to do or die is a cog in a mighty and 
militant machine. 

You have only to carry the analogy with com- 
merce one step farther to discover the thing that 
dominates and makes possible every important 
American co-operative undertaking : namely, a highly 
centralized direction vested with complete authority. 
In this case it happens to be the Commander-in-Chief, 
or, in plain business terms, General Manager of the 
British Armies, Unlimited. 

Disclose the Haig make-up and you also reveal the 
human stuff that leads the forlorn hope. It is the 
universal fibre of the British soldier. The moral of 
it is that you cannot get away from that ancient 
maxim : " Like officers, like men." 

To the human interest historian Haig presents a 
curious paradox. Ask any man that you meet 
II 



i62 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

casually in London what he knows about the Com- 
mander-in-Chief of the British Armies, and he will 
reply at once : " Why, he is a great soldier." Press 
him for further illuminating facts, and the chances are 
that he will hesitate and then say : " The fact is, I 
don't really know any more." It would be a typical 
experience in the hunt for Haig data. 

The first of the many striking things about Sir 
Douglas Haig lies in the amazing anomaly that, 
although his name appears every day in millions of 
newspapers throughout the world (he signs the daily 
reports of British operations in France), he is perhaps 
the least advertised factor in all the tremendous 
drama that he directs. When you meet him you 
discover the reason. 

He is the personification of personal modesty — not 
the professional modesty which is one of the surest 
roads to publicity, but a deep-seated and sincere 
aversion to exploitation. He shuns the spot- 
light. 

I have talked with men who have been his comrades 
from South Africa to the Somme. Save for the most 
superficial information they know nothing about him 
except that he has " made good " wherever he has 
been put. "He doesn't talk much; he is a Fifer," 
they say. 

Right here you get the first ray of light on the 
Haig reserve, for he was born in that little kingdom 
of Fife, where courage is as adamant as its granite 
hills, and whence sprung the Clan MacDuff, foremost 
fighters of a fighting race. The imperturbability of 
those brooding hills is in his soul. It has helped to 
make him the soldier that he is. 

It girded him with the strength and perseverance 
to lead the famous ride to the relief of Kimberley ; it 
bore him through the heroic retreat from Mons ; it 
sustained and fortified him when he rode serenely 
down the shattered line of Ypres and gave life and 
lift to one of the most brilliant stands that military 



A VISIT TO SIR DOUGLAS HAIG 163 

resistance has known. Sir Douglas had cut his fight- 
ing teeth when he succeeded Lord French as Com- 
mander-in-Chief in France. 

Despite his long record of achievement his name 
was far from being a household word like that of 
Kitchener and Roberts. But the important fact was 
that the troops knew him — knew to their pride and 
to their satisfaction that the new leader, like the old, 
had been flame-tried, and not found wanting. 

I like to remember my first glimpse of the Field- 
Marshal. It came after unforgettable days and 
nights with armies that flirted with death above and 
upon the ground. His name ran like a strain up 
and down the line. I had watched troops returning 
from a raid that had netted a good bag of prisoners, 
and heard the jubilant officer say : " This will be 
good news for the Chief at G.H.Q." It was more 
like the enthusiasm of a football player after a hard- 
won game than the satisfaction which followed a 
desperate dash that took its toll of youth and blood. 
But it was typical of what the man on the job thought 
of the man higher up ; and it expressed also, I might 
add, the spirit of the English officer who looks upon 
war as a great adventure. 

And so it came about that after a vicarious ap- 
prenticeship to the trade of war I came upon its 
master-workman. It was a brilliant sunlit winter 
day. Behind me on the main highways I had left 
the endless ammunition trains, the trailing squadrons 
of motor-trucks, the rattling processions of artillery 
— all the clatter and paraphernalia of war transport. 
Only the boom of guns still pounded in my ears. 
They had echoed so long that they seemed part of 
the very noises of nature. 

We turned off the chief artery of trafiic andtra veiled 
for miles along sequestered ways. Soon a single 
chateau loomed above its ivied walk, and almost before 
I realized it we had run the gauntlet of the sentries at 
the gate and had brought up before a doorway that 



i64 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

would have delighted the heart of an architectural 
enthusiast.. 

There was the usual courteous greeting so instinctive 
with the British officer, whether you wade up to him 
through the mud of a trench or meet him amid the 
comforts of humane habitation. 

In France all the headquarters of the various British 
Armies are very much alike in that they are established 
in chateaux. And instead of being commandeered, 
after the German fashion, they are rented and paid 
for in pursuance of the laws of decency and honour. 
Whether by accident or design, the General Head- 
quarters are smaller and more unpretentious than any 
of the others. One reason, perhaps, is that Sir Douglas 
Haig is surrounded only b}^ his personal staff ; the 
other officers who comprise his field cabinet live in 
other quarters. 

The establishment over which the Commander-in- 
Chief presides is practically as its owners left it. A 
few 3^ears before laughing children had played under 
its arch and glad voices had resounded through the 
hall that stretched behind. Although now an outpost 
of war, it still breathed some of the gentle atmosphere 
of peace. The continuous jangle of the telephone was 
the only harsh sound that broke what seemed to all 
intents and purposes the ordinary calm of a well- 
ordered French country house. Save for that and the 
constant movement of officers you would never guess 
that from within these walls issue the orders that, 
translated into action, are changing the map of the 
world. 

The chateau that the Commander-in-Chief occupied 
prior to the time when I visited him was even less 
touched by war. It was still tenanted by the old 
French family, whose home it had been for years and 
who inhabited one of the wings. Hence it came about 
that in those soul-stirring days, when the first Somme 
offensive was being planned and executed, the voices 
of children running up and down the halls mingled 



A VISIT TO SIR DOUGLAS HAIG 165 

with the incessant murmur of the guns and the work 
of that devoted band of men who were directing one 
of the most stupendous operations in the history of all 
war. 

The moment you enter " G.H.Q." you feel that you 
have established a contact with something significant. 
I do not mean that there is the slightest tension, but, 
whether it is the play of the imagination or not, you 
acknowledge an authority that you have never felt 
before. It is the unconscious tribute you pay to the 
personality that dominates the place. 

The desks, maps and eternal telephone are in sharp 
contrast with the ancient furniture and works of art 
that still remain in the house. The old family por- 
traits look down solemnly upon you from the walls. 
They hear and see strange things these strenuous days 
— nothing stranger than the spectacle of the once de- 
tested English in the role of defender of the invaded 
and beloved France. 

I sat chatting with a young staff officer in one of the 
small anterooms that led off from the main hall. His 
telephone bell rang incessantly. During the lull the 
door to my right opened and remained open after a 
military seretary had passed out. 

I looked through the doorway and saw a tall, lithe, 
well-knit man with the insignia of a field-marshal on 
his shoulder-straps. He sat at a plain, flat-topped desk 
earnestly studying a report. In a moment he straight- 
ened up, pushed a button, and mj^ companion said : 

" The Commander-in-Chief will see you now." 

I found myself in a presence that, even without the 
slightest clue to its profession, would have uncon- 
sciously impressed itself as military. Dignity, dis- 
tinction and a gracious reserve mingled in his bearing. 
I have rarely seen a masculine face so handsome and 
yet so strong. His hair and moustache are fair, and 
his clear, almost steely blue eyes catch you, but not 
unkindly. His chest is broad and deep, yet scarcely 
broad enough for the rows of service and other ribbons 



i66 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

that plant a mass of colour against the background of 
khaki. 

The Commander-in-Chief's cavalry training sticks 
out all over him. You see it in the long, shapely lines 
of his legs, and in the rounded calves encased in per- 
fectly polished boots, with their jingle of silver spurs. 
He stands easily and gracefully, and walks with that 
rangy, swinging stride so common, oddly enough, to 
men who ride much. He was a famous fox-hunter in 
his student days at Oxford, and never, save in times 
of utmost crisis, does he forgo his daily gallop. To 
him the motor is a business vehicle, never meant for 
sport or pleasure. In brief. Sir Douglas Haig is the 
literal personification of the phrase " every inch a 
soldier." 

I have seen most of the chiefs of the Allied Armies 
in this war. It is no depreciation of any of them to 
say that the Commander-in-Chief of the British Army 
is the best-groomed and most soldierly looking of 
them all. He has none of the paternal quality which 
impresses you the moment you see Joffre ; he is 
smarter and more alert in appearance than Nivelle. 
Amid all the racking burden of a super-responsibility, 
he remains a cheerful, interested human being, who 
can forget in the distraction of lay discussion the 
agonies that lurk almost within gunshot of his residence. 

The room which is to-day the Capital of British 
military sovereignty in France is a conventional 
drawing-room which, like the rest of the house, 
maintains practically every detail of the original 
furnishing. But it is a soldier's workshop, nevertheless, 
and with all the working tools. Chief among them 
is an immense relief map of the whole Somme region. 
It rests on a large table just behind the Field-Marshal's 
desk. Over this inert and unresponsive mass of grey 
and green clay, criss-crossed with red lines, he has 
pondered through many a wakeful hour. On it is 
written the whole triumphant story of that great 
advance which registered a new glory for British arms. 



A VISIT TO SIR DOUGLAS HAIG 167 

I could not help thinking as I sat there before a 
blazing fire what a great place in history that simple 
room would have ; how in years to come it would be 
known as the real setting of the decisive phase of the 
Great War so far as land operations are concerned. 
We spoke of many things that winter day in France : 
of America, of world pohtics, of the spiritual after- 
math of the war — strange contrast that it was to the 
business of slaughter that raged around us. 

His voice is low and deep — almost musical. He 
is as sparing of words as he is of inen. In his con- 
versation he reminds me of some of those great 
American captains of capital — men Uke Rogers, Ryan 
and Harriman, who, hke himself, beHeved in action 
and not speech ; them, too, who minimized the value 
of their own utterances, and who, when drawn out of 
the shell of their taciturnity, disclosed views of force 
and originahty. 

Like many men of great reserve, the Field-Marshal 
would rather face the jaws of death than an interviewer. 
Indeed, you might count on the fingers of one hand the 
number of times that he has actually talked for publica- 
tion, and then have some to spare. 

Yet this quiet man, at whose command the very 
earth trembles with passion and noise, is very human. 
One of the ironies of this war is that the most inhuman 
of professions is directed by the most human of men. 

He asked me what I thought of the work of the 
armies in the field. I told him that, after their efficiency, 
moral and splendid team-work, one of the things that 
impressed me most was the youth that I saw every- 
where — a rosy, almost radiant youth, that walked into 
death so bhthe and unafraid ! 

" Ah," he said, with thrilling enthusiasm, " war 
to-day is a young man's game. It is a war of youth 
and it takes youth to win," 

I spoke of the many men who had risen from the 
ranks. It seemed to strike a responsive chord, for he 
said swiftly : 



i68 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

" Yes, it is very true. Every man in this war has 
his chance. Efficiency counts above all other things. 
You cannot afford to have friends." 

In this connection it is no breach of confidence for 
me to repeat something that Sir Douglas Haig once said 
to a friend of mine, who is a well-known English editor 
and who had made the usual comment on the extreme 
youth of the great bulk of the British Army. Haig's 
answer to him was : " Why wouldn't a soldier be 
young ? Would you choose men of forty to plan a 
championship football game ? War is more strenuous 
than the fiercest football game." 

I was with Sir Douglas Haig in those momentous 
days when America broke off diplomatic relations with 
Germany, and when those of us temporarily exiled 
abroad realized that the time had at last come when 
we would actively take our place in the line-up of the 
Great Cause. It naturally led to the subject of what 
war had done for the overseas people — and this meant 
those gallant sons of Empire who had heeded the call 
of the mother lioness and had left bush and range and 
field to fight in far-off lands. The Commander-in- 
Chief's face kindled with pride as he said : 

" War, harsh as it is, is also the great maker of 
men. Take the Australian, for example. Every one 
knows that he is as proud as he is undiscipHned. 
Yet war has made him a trained and disciplined 
soldier, and more than that, a world citizen. The same 
is true of the Canadian, the South African and the 
New Zealander; indeed, all those intrepid men who 
have sacrificed so much for principle and for honour. 
They will go back to their homes better equipped 
and better organized for the task of peace." 

Rash prophecy is remote from the Haig scheme 
of life. Although inarticulate about himself, he has 
always favoured the frankest publicity about his army 
and the performance of his men. The brief and 
business -hke reports of operations that emanate each 
day from his headquarters (they are almost epi- 



A VISIT TO SIR DOUGLAS HAIG 169 

grammatic) are eminently characteristic of the man 
whose name they bear. 

Yet behind the unvarnished statement that "a 

trench was taken at " often Ues an unwritten 

classic of courage — an unheralded epic of sacrifice. 

But underneath all this poverty of expression Ues 
a mine of unexplored human material whose richest 
vein is the real personality of the man himself. 

War has raised him to eminence without disclos- 
ing those intimate facts which are so necessary to 
the study of an individual and his achievement. 
Because of this lack of pubUshed information, no less 
marked in Great Britain than in America, it seems 
worth while to dwell for a moment on the story of 
his hfe. This will help you to understand why he 
has travelled so far and how he has welded those 
hosts, gathered from the uttermost ends of the earth, 
into a coherent, elastic, ever-ready and dependable 
force that works with the precision of the most dehcate 
mechanism. 

Most people know that Haig is a Fifer, but what 
most people do not know is the very illuminating fact 
that from his boyhood he aspired to be a soldier. This 
ambition took definite form at Oxford, when he was 
a student at Brasenose College. He was never the 
" hail-fellow-well-met " sort of person. Reserve was 
his hall-mark. But he was always an outdoor man ; 
he invariably rode a big grey horse every afternoon, 
and he spent all his leisure time fox-hunting. 

In those days to be an officer was more of a luxury 
than a real profession in England, The country 
had so adapted itself to the buying of commissions 
that when a man regarded the Army as a definite 
career he became marked. As a matter of fact, as 
Haig galloped through the streets of Oxford and 
across the lovely countryside that lies adjacent he 
was often pointed out. His colleagues would say : 
" There goes young Haig. He's going to be a soldier." 

Little did they dream that the fair-haired boy who 



170 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

sat so erect in his saddle would lead one of the greatest 
armies in the annals of military endeavour, and that 
he would be the inspiration that makes soldiering a 
sacred calling. 

Then, as now, Sir Douglas gave the impression of a 
great store of latent energy — of reserved vitality. Few 
were ever deceived by his quietness into thinking 
that he was apathetic. 

His first military experience was in the cavalry, 
which he has always loved, and his initial promotion 
came from gallant service on the hot sands of Sudan. 
In the South African War he took first rank as a 
cavalry leader. He had so many narrow escapes 
from death that he came to be known as " Lucky 
Haig." 

As you analyse the Haig personality you find that 
he has an amazing insight — a real gift of constructive 
forecast. His appraisal of the German menace will 
illustrate. More than twenty years ago he went to 
Germany for a visit. As a result of that journey he 
wrote a long letter to Sir Evelyn Wood that, in the 
light of the bloody events of the present, is little short 
of uncanny. A friend who saw that letter has summed 
it up as " one of practical insight, masterly of detail, 
shrewd prophecy and earnest warning." The future 
Commander-in-Chief of the British Armies in France 
was convinced then of the inevitableness of a conflict 
with the Kaiser, and he felt strongly the urgent need 
of preparedness for that struggle which he knew would 
uproot all Europe. 

But his warnings, like those of his great colleague, 
Lord Roberts in England, and those of General Leonard 
Wood of America, fell on deaf and unheeding ears. I 
cite this episode merely to show that Haig, like many 
another prophet, was without honour in his own land, 
and also that he has the quality of vision which is 
the indispensable attribute of every leader of men. 

He had ample opportunity to impress his executive 
ability as Chief of Staff in India, and he had just begun 



A VISIT TO SIR DOUGLAS HAIG 171 

to execute some of his striking ideas of training as 
commander at Aldershot (England's great military 
camp) when the Great War broke out. He was in at 
the beginning, and he has been on the firing-line ever 
since. In the rack and agony of those first fighting 
months he saw the hideous harvest that unprepared- 
ness reaps. 

Of those two heroic Army Corps — the famous " First 
Seven Divisions " — that Lord French took to the rescue 
in France in that historic August of 1914 (the intrepid 
array, by the way, that the Kaiser called " the con- 
temptible little English Army "), Haig commanded the 
first, which included much of the cavalry. 

From Mons to Ypres he was in the thick of battle, 
never depressed, never elated, his courage and example 
acting like a talisman of strength on tired and war- 
worn troopers who fought valiantly against odds the 
like of which had hardly been recorded since Ther- 
mopylae. It was such a continuous tale of heroism, 
in which the humblest Tommy had his full share, that 
it is difficult to extract a single incident. 

Out of all that welter of work and fight let us take 
one story which, almost more than any other, reveals 
the grit and stamina that are Sir Douglas Haig's. It 
was at the battle of Ypres, when that immortal thin 
line of British khaki, bent but not broken, stemmed 
the mighty German avalanche and blocked the passage 
to the sea. Outnumbered more than ten to one in 
some places, it fought with that desperate and dogged 
tenacity v/hich has always been the inheritance of the 
British soldier. Every impromptu trench was a 
Valhalla of English gallantry. Deeds that in other 
wars would have stood out conspicuously were here 
merged into an endless succession of deathless glory. 

Lord French, the Commander-in-Chief, had been 
down to the front line. " We can't hold out much 
longer," said a colonel. " It is impossible." " I only 
want men who can do the impossible," replied Lord 
French. " You must hold." And the line held. 



172 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

To the right of Ypres things were going badly. 
The deluge of German shell was well-nigh unbearable. 
Even the most heroic courage could not prevail against 
such an uneven balance of strength. The cry was for 
men, and yet every man was engaged. 

It was on that memorable day — for ever unique in 
the history of British arms — that cooks, servants and 
orderlies went up into the firing-line, and the man who 
exchanged the frying-pan for the rifle achieved a 
record of bravery as imperishable as his comrade long 
trained to fight. Still the lines shook under that 
mighty Teutonic assault . It seemed more than human 
endurance could possibly stand. 

Meanwhile Sir Douglas Haig had been ordered into 
the shambles with the First Corps. They manned the 
bloody breach and won for all time to come the title 
of the Iron Brigade, even as Haig himself in other and 
equally strenuous days had gained the sobriquet of 
" Ironside." The old metal rang true. 

Now came the event which bound the silent Fifer 
to his men with bands of steel. For twenty-four 
hours the furies of battle had raged. The German 
bombardment was now a hideous storm of dripping 
death. The Prussian Guard rose like magic legions 
out of the ground. They had just broken through 
one British line, and small parties of khakied troops 
were in retreat. 

Suddenly down the Menin road, with Ypres sil- 
houetted behind like a mystic city shrouded with 
smoke, rode Sir Douglas Haig — trim, well-groomed, 
serene, sitting his horse erect and unafraid, and with 
an escort of his ov/n 17th Lancers as perfectly 
turned out as on peaceful parade. Overhead was 
the incessant shriek of shells, and all around car- 
nage reigned. A thrill of spontaneous admiration 
swept those tired and battered troops, for the 
spectacle they beheld was as unlike war as night is 
unlike day. 

The effect of that calm and confident presence acted 



A VISIT TO SIR DOUGLAS HAIG 173 

like a cooling draught on a parched tongue. It 
galvanized the waning strength of the gory trenches ; 
the retreat became an advance, and the broken line 
was restored. Haig had turned the tide. 

I have seen that Menin road down which Haig 
rode with that unuttered message of faith. Two 
years had passed, but it was still the highway of 
death, for shrapnel rained all around. It was acces- 
sible to the civilian only if he was willing to take 
his own risk. How much more deadly was it on 
that day when the blue-eyed man who now rules the 
British Armies in France gave that amazing evidence 
of his disregard of danger ! I thought of it then, 
and again on that winter day when I sat talking 
with him amid the comparative ease and comfort 
of General Headquarters. I spoke of it as one of the 
superb acts of the war. The Field-Marshal merely 
shrugged his shoulders, and said, 

" It was nothing." 

A few days after the event that I have just described 
Haig had one of his close calls from death. A 
German shell burst in the midst of his headquarters, 
and nearly every one of his staff officers was killed or 
maimed. The Field-Marshal was out on a tour of 
inspection at the line. " Lucky Haig " again. 

When Haig became Commander-in-Chief of the 
British Armies in France it seemed the logical goal 
of a long, stalwart preparation — the inevitable thing. 
For deep down under the Haig character, and, inci- 
dentally, behind his distinguished achievement, are 
two shining qualities — patience and perseverance. He 
has never hesitated to do what we in America call 
" spade work." It is sometimes prosaic, but it is 
usually effective. 

Contradictory as it may seem when j^ou consider 
his Scotch ancestry^ there must somewhere be a touch 
of the Oriental in Sir Douglas Haig. I mean, of 
course, that phase of his character which finds ex- 
pression in persistent and methodical preparedness. 



174 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

His whole career is literally a dramatization of an 
ancient Moslem proverb which reads, " Patience is 
the key to Paradise." 

Take the Somme offensive. Nothing could express 
the Haig idea better. For months everybody knew 
that the " Big Push " was booked. There were 
many times during the lull that preceded the ad- 
vance when men less cautious would have loosed the 
dogs of war that tugged so hard at the leash. But 
the Field- Marshal, with that super-patience, waited 
until the last and most minute detail was ready. 
Then he shot his bolt, and it went home. It was a 
triumph of the readiness which is the basic principle 
of the Haig creed. 

What is known as the " Haig nibble " is another 
conspicuous example of his technique. In this war 
the open engagement is the rare exception. After 
the first few months it developed into a trial by 
trench — a wearing-down process. " Attrition " is 
what the experts call it. Nothing could suit the 
Field-Marshal's temperament better. A method of 
campaign that would discourage most commanders 
and lead them to indiscretion has made it possible 
for him to push steadily and stolidly on. 

This, then, is the type of man who sits at the fiat- 
topped desk at General Headquarters with his finger 
on that battle pulse, responsive to its remotest 
quiver. The marvel of motor, telegraph and tele- 
phone enables him to be in constant touch with every 
unit of his command. Follow him through his day's 
work and you see how the war game is played — a 
war that, having tested the resource and the resiliency 
of all Europe, has now extended its dread domain 
beyond the reaches of the Atlantic to the shores of 
America. It is the titanic task ! 

And when this moving picture, more animated 
than any imaginative play ever thrown upon cinema 
screen, has passed before you, you realize, even before 
a single shot is fired, that dynamic energy and 



A VISIT TO SIR DOUGLAS HAIG 175 

organization of the highest order have been tested 
to a well-nigh incredible extent. 

Since the Commander-in-Chief himself is the 
incarnation of systematic labour, it follows that the 
daily procedure of that modest establishment which 
he rules " somewhere in France " is efficient and 
effective. Taking its cue from the top, it lets nothing 
disturb the tenor of its way. Triumph or disaster 
is treated just the same. The unflinching discipline 
which binds the Head of the Armies to his closest 
colleagues has made possible a consistent and un- 
wavering progress of the war. 

Every morning at nine o'clock Sir Douglas Haig 
is at his desk, and from that time until the lunch- 
gong sounds he is in conference with the heads of 
those various branches of the service whose efforts 
comprise the total of war operations. Upon his 
desk are heaped the reports of everything that 
happened the night before. A raid on forty yards of 
trench many miles away may reveal information of 
the utmost importance to the whole army. Thus the 
office becomes a clearing-house of information, and 
out of it emerges the news, grave or cheering, that 
is flashed to a waiting world, and likewise those more 
significant commands whose execution makes history. 

The process of assembling and assimilating all the 
news of that extended front is reduced to a very simple 
science. This is because each army unit has its own 
headquarters — a replica in every detail of the general 
establishment. The difference between these lesser 
headquarters and the Chief's is that at the former 
must be handled, in addition to actual fighting and 
flying, the terrific task of providing food and am- 
munition, ambulance and hospital relief, remounts and 
renewal of rank and personnel. 

The mystery oi close and continuous contact be- 
tween the Allied Armies is easily explained. It is 
accomplished by means of what is known as a liaison 
officer, or group of officers. They are precisely what 



176 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

this French word means — a connection. There is a 
French mission, or liaison, with all British commands, 
and vice versa. Through this medium all communica- 
tion is made, and all news of operations transmitted. 
It is swift, simple and direct. 

So, too, with that monster agency of devastation — 
the modern battle. Go behind the scene and you 
find that, like every other detail of the war, it is 
merely a matter of systematic, calculating detail. It is 
like a super-selling campaign conducted by the best 
organized business concern in the world. 

In former days, when wars were decided by a single 
heroic engagement, armies stood on their arms for 
hours before battle while the commander rode up and 
down the lines giving the men cheer and encourage- 
ment. To-day the commander who tried that trick 
would last about two consecutive seconds, because the 
long arm of artillery which has annihilated distance 
would also wipe him out. 

Instead, the Commander-in-Chief remains many 
miles behind the front, bound to it by every means 
that instant communication devises. He has before 
him photographs of every inch of enemy ground, 
taken by aviators. The wonderful thing about this 
battle -planning is that by means of these aerial pictures 
it is possible to keep the panorama of battleground up 
to the very minute. In winter, for example, a fall of 
snow will greatly alter the whole situation. But the 
aerial photographer gets around this b^^ making a series 
of pictures that show the enemy trench, before, during 
and after the snowfall. 

The plan of a great campaign like the Somme is 
built out of months of preparation and conference. 
The Com.mander-in-Chief decides on the general 
scheme, while the specific tasks are assigned for exe- 
cution to the various army commanders. In other 
words, every chief and the men under him have a 
particular job to do, and it is up to them to do it. 
The total of these jobs, some of them requiring months 



A VISIT TO SIR DOUGLAS HAIG 177 

of solid effort, comprise the offensive. War nowadays 
is a series of so-called offensives enlisting millions of 
men and ranging over hundreds of miles of front. 
It is devoid of thrill ; you never see a flag ; it is 
literally the hardest kind of plain, everyday toil. 

As you watch the organization of the British Armies 
in France unfold you become more and more impressed 
with their kinship with Big Business as we know it in 
America. Like Andrew Carnegie, Sir Douglas Haig 
leans on experts. He assumes that a man who has 
devoted a large part of his life to a specific task knows 
all about it, and is to be trusted. He has gathered 
about him, therefore, a group of keen, alert and live- 
minded advisers. Some of them served their appren- 
ticeship in other wars ; others have been swiftly 
seasoned in the present struggle. They represent the 
very flower of service and experience. It is a remark- 
able company — these men who move so noiselessly, 
who work so loyally, who keep incessant vigil with war. 

There is still another link with business. In many 
large commercial establishments in the United States 
you find a so-called Suggestion Box. Into it the 
humblest employe may drop a suggestion for the 
improvement of the business. It ranges from a plan 
for a more methodical arrangement of office stationery 
to a whole new system of time and labour-saving 
machinery. In many cases prizes are offered for the 
best suggestions made during the year. 

There is no such box at General Headquarters, 
but its informal substitute is the meal-table, where 
both civilian and soldier have free play, not only to 
inquire about the branch of service in which they 
are most interested, but to make any suggestions 
that may be born of observation. No recommenda- 
tion is too modest or too far-fetched to have the 
serious and courteous consideration of the kindly 
man who sits at the head of the table. 

Nor is all the talk of shop. War is subordinated 
to the less ravaging things that are happening out 
12 



178 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

in the busy world, where there is no rumble of guns, 
nojclash of armed men, and where life is not one bom- 
bardment after another. And sometimes, too, there 
is talk of those haunts and homes across the sea where 
brave hearts yearn and where the agony of wansus- 
pense,;.is no less searching than at the fighting front. 
They also serve who wait alone. 

Into every detail of daily life at General Head- 
quarters the Field-Marshal's character is impressed. 
After lunch, for example, he spends an hour alone, 
and in this period of meditation the whole fateful 
panorama of the war passes before him. When it 
is over, the wires splutter and the fierce life of the 
coming night — the army does not begin to fight until 
most people go to sleep — is ordained. 

This finished, the brief period of respite begins. 
Rain or shine, his favourite horse is brought up to 
the door and he goes for a ride, usually accompanied 
by one or two young staff officers. I have seen Sir 
Douglas Haig galloping along those French roads, 
head up, eyes ahead — a memorable figure of grace 
and motion^ He rides like those latter-day centaurs — 
the Austrian ranger and the American cowboy. He 
seems part of his horse. 

Home from the ride, there are more conferences. 
Then dinner with its lighter but always instructive 
talk and its relief from the strain of work. 

You have seen the picture of the average week- 
day at the nerve centre of the British Army in France. 
Now drop in on Sunday. The telephone still jingles, 
the typewriters click, there is the same movement of 
orderlies to and fro, the usual succession of conferences. 
But there is one other performance worthy of the day 
and eminently typical of the keen-eyed Scotchman 
who is the repository of so much British hope and fear. 
At ten o'clock in the morning the long grey motor 
with its tiny British flag is at the door (it is the 
only car at the front carrying this insignia), the 
Commander-in-Chief steps inside and is whirled off 



A VISIT TO SIR DOUGLAS HAIG 179 

to the little Presbyterian church, where he sits with 
his brother officers and men and hears good old- 
fashioned Scotch orthodoxy preached by a " padre," 
as they call the army chaplain. The weather is 
never too bad or the pressure of those multitudinous 
reports for Sir Douglas Haig to miss a Sunday service. 
This devotion to the creed of his fathers is just' one 
other evidence of the character of the fair-haired, 
blue-eyed soldier who is Pershing's chief brother-in- 
arms. 

That modest establishment somewhere in France 
is early to bed, but more than one guest at General 
Headquarters on the way to his chamber has passed 
the office of the Commander-in-Chief and seen him 
— a silent, aloof, almost lonely figure — leaning over 
a map and beginning the nightly wrestle with the 
great problem that, reaching out from the friendly 
house amid the trees, affects the destiny and safety 
of the whole world. 

In that closing picture is the revelation of Haig the 
Man and Soldier. His personality is the concentrated 
sum of patient, persistent and untiling effort. Lacking 
the brilliancy of spectacular natures, it combines those 
elements of stamina and perseverance that rear, in the 
end, the impregnable bulwark of confidence and success. 



XI 

ENGLAND'S WAR EFFICIENCY ENGINEER 

WHEN you strip away the glamour from the 
Great War and analyse the larger results 
you find that nothing achieved so far is of 
more permanent value to the future than 
the infusion of business methods into the conduct of 
Governments. Just as the war itself is organized 
and operated upon a huge commercial basis, so have 
the Cabinets become Clearing-Houses for the best 
business brains. The hands that have moulded 
industry now shape the destinies of nations. Sales- 
manship has succeeded Statesmanship. 

Never before in all history has there been such a 
shaking up of dry administrative bones. The pro- 
fessional European politician, born to office, is in 
the main a vanishing type ; his " pull " is a lost art. 
There is a definite reason. The bilHons consumed 
on the fiery altar of the stupendous conflict demand 
employment by men trained to the fiscal task, while 
the gearing of railways and industries to the titanic 
needs requires a specialized preparation for the colossal 
readjustments of peace. 

In no Allied country have business talents been 
so completely commandeered as in England. With 
the exception of Mr. Lloyd George, Mr. Balfour 
and a few other seasoned office-holders, the Cabinet 
is a Board of Directors recruited from industrial 
pursuits that could sit on any problem of overhead 




Copyright Photograph by y. Russell &• Sons 
SIR KRIC GEDDES 



ENGLAND'S WAR EFFICIENCY ENGINEER i8i 

cost and distribution that came up.. In addition, 
practically every important war activity is either 
dominated or controlled by men who left their desks 
and counting-rooms to become Drive- Wheels of the 
Mighty Machine of War. 

If this Commercialization of Government, as it 
might be called, had begun in the United States no 
one would have been surprised. Business is instinct 
with us. The fact that it was born amid the hide- 
bound traditions of British Statesmanship makes it 
one of the many miracles of a war of miracles. Nor 
does any single fact more eloquently proclaim Britain's 
determination to be a tremendous industrial factor 
when the war is over. 

The evolution was interesting. When England 
went into war almost overnight she had a Govern- 
ment composed of professional statesmen. Save 
only Bonar Law, a retired steel-master, who was 
Colonial Secretary, a post, by the way, which did 
not call for a vast amount of commercial training, 
there was not a single man of practical business 
experience in the Cabinet. Not until Lord Northcliffe 
exploded his famous bomb-shell about the lack of 
high explosives which jolted Kitchener from his 
pedestal and led to the establishment of the Ministry 
of Munitions did the Government draw the recruits 
from commerce about its standard. 

The Ministry of Munitions therefore represents the 
corner-stone of the Business Bulwark that the Empire 
has reared. Llo3^d George was the first Minister of 
Munitions. He was not a business man, but he knew 
how business affairs should be conducted. He knew, 
too, thai America had built her industrial supremacy 
on close-knit and scientific organization. He did what 
Andrew Carnegie or any other man of that type would 
do. He mobilized the Schwabs, the Edisons, the 
Henry Fords, and the Westinghouses of the Kingdom 
and made them his fellow- workers. 

From every corner of the Empire he drafted ex- 



i82 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

perience. He wanted workers without stint, so he 
started a Bureau of Labour ; he needed publicity, so 
he launched an Advertising Department ; to compete 
successfully with the Germans he knew that he would 
have to employ every inventive resource that his 
country could command, so he founded an Invention 
and Research Bureau ; he saw that the shirker and the 
slacker were still abroad in the land, so he unfurled the 
Union Jack in every mill and took over the control of 
British Industry ; finally, with his Munitions Act he 
conscripted the workers at forge and furnace into an 
industrial army that was practically under martial 
law. He slashed red tape and he injected red blood 
into the Arteries of Government. 

Such was the real beginning of the business con- 
duct of the war so far as the British end was con- 
cerned. The startling results produced by the 
Ministry of Munitions convinced Lloyd George that 
the business man was one of the nation's chief assets 
— an asset which should be capitalized to the very 
last degree. When he suggested to Mr. Asquith and 
to his other colleagues in the Government the neces- 
sity for what amounted to a commercialization of war 
procedure he was met with the argument that " too 
many business men would spoil the Government." 

The little Welshman bided his time. When he 
became Premier in December 1916 he startled Eng- 
land with a Cabinet that represented the real business 
leadership of the Kingdom. Since that time the 
nation has taken steady toll of its commercial genius, 
until to-day the control of national affairs, and more 
especially the domination of the three great agencies 
of War, Food and Finance, are almost entirely in the 
hands of men who had spent their previous hves 
doing nothing more stirring or patriotic than roUing 
up great fortunes in railroads, shipping, banking or 
manufacture of some kind. 

Premier in this Government by Business is Sir 
Eric Geddes, who is the Lloyd George of the New Era. 



ENGLAND'S WAR EFFICIENCY ENGINEER 183 

He is England's War Efficiency Engineer. " Let 
Geddes Do It " is the Slogan of imperial distress. 

In less than two years and at the age of forty-two, 
Geddes has become a Prop of Government. There 
are many people of England to-day who believe that 
he has more than a fifty-fifty chance to be Prime 
Minister. If this happens — and nothing seems im- 
possible in this war — it would represent the very 
last word in Commercialized National Control. 

What is the explanation of Gedde? ? The answer 
hes in the fact that first, last and always he is a 
business man. He has regarded every one of the 
many difficult problems put up to him since the 
beginning of the war merely as a business proposition, 
applied his training and experience, and made good. 
This is the formula of what is commonly regarded as 
the most spectacular personal success of the war. 

When I first met Geddes he sat at an obscure desk 
in a small office in the Armament Building. It was 
in 1915 and the Ministry of Munitions was in the 
making. Although he was the highest-paid railway 
official in England he was practically unknown out 
of his own field. When I last talked with him he 
was First Lord of the Admiralty, the post vacated 
by Churchill and Carson in succession, and all Britain 
hailed him as glorified Life-Preserver. He had gal- 
vanized the whole British munition output ; he had 
put the British Military Railways in France on the 
map ; he had reorganized the Admiralty on a business 
basis, and was facing the toughest of all his tasks — 
the suppression of the submarine pest. 

In Geddes the Lloyd George history repeats itself. 
For the first two years of the war the present Prime 
Minister was shunted into every national emergency, 
whether it was a coal strike in Wales, a snarl among the 
Allies or the unravelhng of some Governmental tangle. 
He went from post to post until he reached the top. 
Geddes is now the Super-Minute Man, ready to jump 
into the breach at the first sound of the fire alarm. 



i84 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

In the American vernacular he is always there " with 
the goods." You have only to take a survey of his 
life — it is as swift and stirring as a movie-film — to 
understand why he has been able to register every 
time. The approach to his star part in Business- 
Managing the Empire is an animated sermon on how 
to succeed. 

Geddes was born in India of Scotch parents who 
returned to the Mother Country when he was very 
young. Being Scotch, he is thrifty with everything 
but his own energy. He practically ran away from 
home when he was seventeen. His father, con- 
vinced that he would come back, gave him a cheque 
for $75 to be used for his return passage. When he 
got to New York (he went in the steerage of an Allan 
liner) he mailed back the cheque saying, in one of his 
characteristically brief letters, " I think it will do me 
good to go on my own." 

Unlike most of the heroes of human interest 
romances he had more than the traditional fifty cents 
in his pockets. To be exact, his fortune was ten 
dollars. His first job was as typewriter salesm^an in 
New York. Then he drifted to Pittsburg, worked at 
the Homestead Steel Works for a dollar and a half a 
day and finally landed as section hand on the Balti- 
more and Ohio Railroad in West Virginia. The 
engineer in charge of the gang was L. F. Loree, who 
later became president of the road. 

For a time the section worked near a small station 
called Nicolette. The converted freight-car used as 
a lodging-house by the labourers and which Geddes 
now calls his first Pullman, stood on a siding close by. 
In his odd moments Geddes began to study train- 
dispatching and telegraphy. His teacher was the 
station agent, a kindly Irishwoman, whose sweetheart 
was the section foreman. In exchange for instruction 
he "passed" the trains for her -that is, officially 
signalled them by — while the agent was out with her 
young man. When she finally married him Geddes 



ENGLAND'S WAR EFFICIENCY ENGINEER 185 

got her position as station agent. Thus the future 
First Lord of the British Admiralty and a possible 
Prime Minister of Great Britain flashed signals and 
even sv/itched cars for Baltimore and Ohio trains at 
an obscure point in West Virginia. 

Geddes was big, brawny and restless.' He wanted 
to see America, so he went to Alabama, worked as 
a timber " jack" and learned the lumber business at 
first hand. When he was twenty-one he sailed off 
to Australia, rode the range as a sheep herder and 
turned up a year later in India, where he took root 
for the time. His knowledge of railroading gained in 
America enabled him to become foreman of a gang 
of coolies building a light railway through the jungles. 
The moment he touched light railway construction 
he reached the work that was to qualify him in later 
years as a master war-wager. In five years he was 
Traffic Manager of Rohilkund and Kumaon Railway. 
After this, life for Geddes was just one promotion 
after another. He seemed to find the magic key and 
all doors opened to him. 

Some of the Indian stockholders in his railway were 
also stockholders in the North-Eastern Railway in 
England. They began to write home about the con- 
struction wizard who had dropped into their midst. 
The English stockholders soon got the impression that 
he was too valuable a man to be wasted on Oriental 
jungles. At Simla one Wednesday Geddes got an 
offer by cable to come to the North-Eastern. On the 
following Saturday he was on his way. This is the 
Geddes system of doing things. 

The North-Eastern is one of the richest roads in 
England. It skirts the humming Midlands and taps 
an immense coal and iron area. Geddes' first job was 
as Chief Goods Manager, which corresponds with a 
General Freight Agent on an American road. Geddes 
at once had the inspiration that would come to any 
wide-awake American traffic official. He decided to 
promote industry along his line. No one had ever 



i86 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

thought of this in England before. In the face of 
considerable opposition from the Board of Directors 
he established the office of Industrial Manager. The 
result was increased revenue and growing goodwill. 

Now came one of those curious freaks of fate that 
bob up so often in the lives of men of action. Geddes 
got an offer to operate an Argentine railway at a 
salary that seemed fabulous. He took it up with the 
North-Eastern people, and while they could not meet 
the South American proposition they agreed to pay 
him what was then, and what remains, the highest 
salary ever paid a railway official in Great Britain. 
If Geddes had accepted that Argentine offer the chances 
are that to-day he would be the king-pin among South 
American railway operators instead of being a leading 
figure in the drama of the Great War. 

When the war broke out Geddes was Deputy General 
Manager of the North-Eastern. The General Manager 
was practically a figure-head, so Geddes was really 
head of the system. He wanted to do his war bit, so 
he went to the War Office in September 1914 and said : 

" You haven't any trained railway troops in France 
and I think you will need them." 

"No, thank you," said the War Office, "we can 
manage very well." 

That was before business sense had dawned on the 
War Office. It was the first of a long series of blunders 
with men and materials that cost the Empire dearly. 

Eric Geddes is not easily discouraged. He returned 
to York, which is the centre of the North-Eastern 
system, and raised a railway battalion out of his 
employes. He became their Lieutenant-Colonel and 
the unit became part of the Pioneer and Sapper Division 
of the Royal Engineers. It was Geddes who helped 
to lay out a large part of the trench system which 
comprises part of the coast defence in the North of 
England. 

It was impossible for Geddes to keep out of the war 
game. Destiny was working in his direction and it 



ENGLAND'S WAR EFFICIENCY ENGINEER 187 

manifested itself in the shape of a message from 
Kitchener, who asked him to come to the War Office. 
These two big a,nd outstanding personaHties had known 
each other in India. The first thing that K. of K. 
said was this : 

" I am not happy about the railway situation in 
France. There is too much congestion of supplies and 
material. Can you go over and straighten things out ? " 

" Of course," replied Geddes. " I can start to- 
morrow." 

But Geddes did not start to-morrow. The Red 
Tape Octopus squeezed out Kitchener's scheme, and 
Geddes had to go back to his railway battalion. For 
the second time England turned down the man on 
whom she now leans so heavily. 

Geddes besought his Board of Directors to get him 
into the war. 

" If you tender my services perhaps they will be 
accepted," he said. 

The Chairman went to the Government, saying : 

" We know we have a big man in Geddes and he is 
wasting his time training men." 

But the Government still remained deaf. The 
old hostility of the dyed-in-the-wool regular for the 
civilian stood pat. 

Once more Kitchener sent for Geddes. This time 
the War Lord was in the North, and Geddes joined him 
on his private car at Newcastle. 

" I am uneasy about munitions," said Kitchener. 
" Can you come in and help us ? " 

Geddes had become accustomed to offering his 
services to the Government, so he made the usual 
assent, to which the Secretary of State for War re- 
sponded : 

"If no Munitions Department is established I 
want you to come with me to the War Office." 

While Kitchener was arranging to fit Geddes into 
his scheme of things the Northcliffe exposure about 
shell shortage broke like a storm over England. When 



i88 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

it subsided, Lloyd George sat at a desk in an office 
at Whitehall as Minister of Munitions. With a stroke 
of the pen the British Government had created a 
whole new Ministry that was in many respects the 
very Hope of Empire. But this Department existed 
on paper. Lloyd George had to translate it into a 
going concern and do it in a hurry. He had never 
heard of Geddes, but his name was handed to him in 
a list of men eligible for work with him. 

Three days later, Geddes and Lloyd George met for 
the first time. It was an historic meeting, because 
from that hour on the war was to give each one a 
tremendous opportunity, which was to be capitalized 
to the very last degree. 

" What can you do ? " asked Lloyd George, in his 
brief and abrupt fashion. 

" I have no technical knowledge of shell-making, 
but I can get things done," rephed Geddes. 

" All right," rejoined the little Minister, " you will 
have every chance." 

In May 1915 Geddes was made Deputy Director- 
General of Munitions, and took over the production 
of rifles, small arms, optical instruments, transport 
vehicles, machine-guns and salvage. It was Geddes 
who first began to retrieve empty shell-cases, and 
through a system of careful transportation made it 
possible for the Government to use brass cartridge 
cases at least a dozen times. He was one of the 
Fathers of Salvage. 

In six weeks he had his whole machine going at full 
tilt. England suddenly found herself bang up against 
a serious munitions problem. MilUons of empty 
shell-cases were coming in from America. These cases 
had to be filled ; otherwise they were so much inert 
and ineffective metal. All the while the cry across 
the waters from France was " Munitions and Still 
More Munitions." British guns stood impotent before 
the German avalanche of steel. 

Geddes_]j.saw that no munitions task was quite so 



ENGLAND'S WAR EFFICIENCY ENGINEER 189 

important as getting these millions of shell-cases filled. 
So he annexed the job. It meant more work for him, 
but one of his chief traits is that he is a glutton for 
work. 

Factories had to be built or adapted, and an army 
of workers recruited and trained. To give you some 
idea of the technical difficulties of shell-filling let me 
say that there are exactly sixty-four items — that is, 
sixty-four component parts — in filling a single 18- 
pounder shell. Men and women had to be taught the 
care and use of deadly explosives. It meant the 
establishment of a whole new school of labour. 

Geddes turned on the full current of his dynamic 
energy. He assumed control of the Royal Ordnance 
Factories at Woolwich, Waltham and Enfield. Before 
the leaves on the French hills turned red and brown 
that fateful autumn, British batteries were hurling 
back shell for shell in every bombardment that the 
German artillery made. The whole British offensive of 
September 1915 was due almost entirely to the fact 
that Geddes had stimulated the output of the shell- 
filling factories, and had put live and up-to-date 
American business co-ordination behind the men and 
the machines. 

The astonishing parallel in the advancement of 
Lloyd George and Geddes now became marked. When 
Kitchener went to his death on the Hampshire and 
Lloyd George succeeded him as Secretary of State for 
War, the first question he asked when he took his new 
desk was : 

" Is Geddes free ? " 

Geddes was. It is characteristic of the man that 
he never permits a job to master him. He does the 
conquering. Part of his administrative creed is to 
organize his work so thoroughly that it can run 
without him. This is the reason why he has always 
been able to act as First Aid when the Hurry-up Call 
came. Lloyd George therefore found him ready for 
a new demonstration of his many-sided talents. 



igo THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

Like his lamented predecessor, Lloyd George was 
worried about the railway situation in France. He 
was getting the shells across the Channel, but the shells 
were not getting up to the men fast enough. The 
battle of the Somme had proved that England had all 
the ammunition she needed, but as the armies went 
forward the railways behind did not keep pace. 

" Are you sure that the French railways can carry 
all the traf&c ? " asked Lloyd George. 

" No, I am not," rephed Geddes. 

" Then make an investigation and report to me," 
was the injunction from the War Secretary. 

Geddes went to France in mufti and made one of 
his swift and searching appraisals of the transportation 
system. Here he was on his chosen ground. He saw 
ammunition being mishandled ; to use his phrase, 
" the stuff was bogged." Being a railway man he 
reaUzed that the best and quickest way to get shells 
up to the fighting men was on light railways, which 
could be laid down or repaired overnight. He went 
back to Lloyd George and summed up his recommenda- 
tion in a single sentence, which was : 

" We must have light railways that can follow the 
guns as they smash the way up the hne." 

On the spot, Lloyd George made him Director of 
Mihtary Railways at the War Office. The very next 
day, Field-Marshal Sir Douglas Haig, whom he had 
met during his investigation, offered him the post of 
Director-General of Transportation in France. He 
wired back : 

" I have just accepted post of Director of Military 
Railways at the War Office." 

Haig immediately telegraphed : 

" Take both jobs." 

Geddes accepted both positions, and now began a 
remarkable career as a dual personahty that is without 
precedent in all war history. As Director-General of 
Transportation in France he had to requisition himself 
as Director of Mihtary Railways at the War Office for 



ENGLAND'S WAR EFFICIENCY ENGINEER 191 

all the materials used in the field. For once the 
Consumer could find no fault with the Producer. 
They were ''one and the same person. 

Geddes began the work, which dramatized all his 
previous experience and put him in the War Hall of 
Fame. He found the railways in France congested ; 
the rolling-stock broken down under the terrific drive 
for food, troops and ammunition ; the rails and road- 
bed showing the effect of the incessant wear and tear. 
He faced a colossal and momentous job of reconstruc- 
tion, because the railways meant life or death, and 
traffic could not be interrupted for a single hour. It 
was Hke rebuilding a Terminal like the Grand Central 
Station in New York City without interfering with 
the operation of a train. Geddes turned the trick. 

He got his whole task down on paper first. He 
built a pyramid, with himself as Director-General of 
Transportation at the apex and divided into four 
main Divisions. One was Organization of Forces ; the 
second was Technical and dealt with Equipment, 
Extensions and all allied activities ; the third was 
purely Statistical, while the fourth had to do with 
Construction. He called this his Organization and 
Liaison Chart, because every one of these branches 
was literally married to the other. It was this close 
and constant team-work that won out. 

In working out his organization Geddes did a very 
characteristic thing. He said to the Army Council 
in substance, "If I am to be Director-General of 
Transportation I must be master of all the highways." 
He therefore took over the control of the network of 
inland waterways which included all the canals of 
Northern France. Hundreds of thousands of tons of 
freight and thousands of wounded men move up and 
down their winding way each month. 

Geddes had to use the French roads to haul his 
supplies. They were in bad shape from the inter- 
minable movement of men, food, munitions and 
supphes, so he became their custodian. Thus to his 



192 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

growing activities he now added road-making. He 
reorganized the French quarries and moved the 
broken stone direct from hill to steam-roller. He kept 
the roads in repair with battalions of navvies that 
he brought over from England. 

Not content with all this, he reached out and annexed 
the Domain of Docks and Dock Engineering. This 
work was formerly under the wing of the Army Service 
Corps. Geddes established a Department responsible 
for the repair and upkeep of all the Docks. This 
was a very essential work, because delays in the coming 
and going of supply ships would interfere with the 
Lines of Food Communication in the field. 

Being a disciple of centralization Geddes farmed 
out the responsibility for the huge job that he had 
cut out for himself. At the head of each Department 
he placed a Director, who became the Geddes of that 
particular Branch, whether it was Roads, Docks, 
Transportation, Light Railways or Inland Water 
Transport. 

Before long, Geddes was a Dictator, with an Empire 
all his own. He had to have a suitable capital, so he 
planted his flag just outside the little town which 
will always be famous as the General Headquarters 
of the British Armies in France. Here he built a 
remarkable group of offices. Technically they are 
called Transportation Headquarters, but in the 
popular history of the M^ar they will always be known 
as Geddesburg. 

These offices are really a community group. The 
central structure is so arranged that the moment 
you enter you can look down a long hall and see a 
succession of signs that not only indicate every man's 
office, but his job. These offices are arranged in order 
of seniority. The first, therefore, is that of the Director- 
General of Transportation. Next comes the Deputy 
Director-General of Transportation and so on. One 
value of this arrangement is that a man can see at a 
glance just the office he is seeking, because the function^ 



ENGLAND'S WAR EFFICIENCY ENGINEER 193 

of that office is revealed at the same time. It saves 
time and temper. This plan is a little sidelight on 
the way Geddes does things. 

At the outset of his experience in France he was 
wise enough to call to his aid a group of trained 
regular soldiers who knew military requirements and 
who were familiar with conditions in the field. He 
once explained his reason by saying, " The trained 
soldier can do the soldier's job better than anyone 
else. For an expert job you must get experts and 
let them alone." I might add, in passing, that this 
is the simple little rule upon which Northcliffe has 
reared the structure of his whole success with news- 
papers and magazines. 

Since his job was reconstruction, Geddes' first and 
foremost difficulty lay with raw materials. How to 
get them was the problem, because the head of every 
other Army and Navy activity was moving heaven 
and earth in a mad effort to obtain wood and steel. 
He had decided that light railways would save the 
whole Supply and Ammunition situation. In order 
to feed them he knew that the broad-gauge lines 
would have to be increased on a large scale. He 
further realized that to get new equipment for both 
light and standard gauge systems was out of the 
question in the brief time at his command. He de- 
termined to follow the line of least resistance. His 
campaign, therefore, resolved itself into getting new 
light railway material from mill and factory and 
drafting part of the existing standard gauge equip- 
ment from the going British railroads. 

The first of these propositions was a simple matter 
of making contracts and following them through. 
The second bristled with troubles. All the railways 
in the United Kingdom were under military control, 
to be sure, but to commandeer rolling stock and 
tracks was little short of confiscation even under 
drastic war regulations. 

Geddes decided to use diplomacy. He knew he 

13 



194 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

had to " sell " the British railway managers on the 
proposition of giving up part of their equipment, 
so he invited them to come to France and see the 
army in action and go over the whole railway system. 
Practically none of these men had been in the zones 
of the armies. They came, they saw, and they 
were conquered by Geddes. They went home con- 
vinced that the Director-General of Transportation 
ought to have everything he asked for. When he 
demanded hundreds of locomotives and thousands of 
freight-cars and hundreds of miles of actual track he 
got them. 

It meant literally taking up a whole railway system 
in England and laying it down in France. This is 
why you see, as you travel along the French Lines 
of Communication to-day, North-Eastem locomotives 
hauling London and South- Western trucks on tracks 
that formerly gridironed the Midland System. It 
helps to make the Tommy feel at home. 

By getting a ready-made standard gauge railway 
system Geddes was able to go straight ahead with 
the light railway construction. Once more he did a 
characteristic thing. " If we are to build railroads 
they must be built by seasoned railroad men," he 
said. He knew that the railways in Canada had 
blazed their iron way through virgin land, and that 
as a result the Canadian Pacific, the Canadian Northern 
and the Grand Trunk had marshalled an army of 
builders who had fought flood, gorge and canyon. 
He recruited this host of construction pioneers for 
France and organized them into the so-called Canadian 
Railway Battalions. At their head he placed a game 
and grizzled railway contractor, " Jack " Stewart, 
gave him a major-general's commission, and before 
many months had passed these men had laid down 
hundreds of miles of light railways. I have seen 
them within forty yards of the front-line trenches. 

All the while, Geddes was doing precisely what 
James J. Hill would have done under the same con- 



ENGLAND'S WAR EFFICIENCY ENGINEER 195 

ditions. He dug out the vital statistics of all the 
lines he operated. He got such startling facts as 
demurrage under fire, the traffic density per mile in 
the fighting area, the time consumed for unloading 
at Railhead, the number of empty cars that came 
back to the Advanced Supply Depot— indeed, every 
scrap of information that could illumine or facilitate 
operations. Armed with these statistics he estab- 
lished a definite schedule. Every car had to be 
unloaded within a prescribed time, no matter if it 
was under shell fire or not ; every train had to bring 
back its quota of material for salvage, wounded men 
or troops bound for the Rest Camps. " No empty 
hauls " was the slogan that went forth from Geddes- 
burg. These were the rules for the standard gauge 
line. 

Geddes was no less exacting with the light railways. 
They were kept to an iron-bound regulation. More 
than this, he drove them forward with an unceasing 
labour that did not flinch or pause in the face of shot 
and shell. 

What was the result ? When the Germans made 
their famous " victorious retreat " in the Somme in 
the spring of 1917 the railway followed right behind 
them. The rear-guard of Haig's pursuing army 
could hear the shriek of the advancing locomotives 
as they steamed along the freshly laid track. The 
Iron Horse almost trod on Tommy's heels ! It was 
a triumph of the Geddes system which brought food, 
equipment, suppHes and ammunition right into the 
zone of actual fighting. 

This procedure was repeated in an even more 
dramatic way last November when Byng smashed 
his way behind the tanks toward Cambrai. During 
these stirring operations the light railways were in 
some instances apace with the fighting troops. With- 
out them the advance would have been impossible. 
From this bill of particulars you can readily under- 
stand how and why Geddes made good in France. 



196 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

Six months after he estabHshed himself at Geddesburg 
he was made Inspector-General of Transportation 
for all the theatres of war. This made him the traffic 
king of the British Armies everywhere. Most men 
would have been content with this full-sized job. 
But England had taken Geddes' measure and found 
that it fitted all emergencies. The time had come 
for him to move on. He took the next round of the 
service ladder, and in a way that was little short of 
sensational. 

With the battle of Jutland storm-clouds began 
to gather over the British Admiralty. There was 
no dissatisfaction over the fitness of the Grand Fleet, 
but a growing feeling that it was being kept under 
leash. The submarine devastation was getting on 
the nation's nerves. A strong public sentiment 
crystallized in the shape of a demand that the barnacles 
be scraped away from the hull of the Admiralty, and 
that the good old ship be manned with younger and 
redder blood. 

Geddes, who meanwhile had become Sir Eric, was 
put upon the bridge. He was made a member of the 
Board of the Admiralty with the rank of vice-admiral 
and the title of controller, which went back to the 
time of Samuel Pepys. With characteristic tenacity, 
however, he maintained his post as Inspector-General 
of Transportation, which carried with it the rank of 
major-general in the army. Thus he maintained the 
integrity of his dual personality, because he became 
the only civilian in all history who could wear, if it 
were possible, a Major-General's and a Vice- Admiral's 
uniform at the same time. The wags immediately 
began to suggest that he appear in public in the 
trousersjpf one service and the coat of another. 

The introduction of Geddes into the Admiralty was 
just one more proof of the urgent need of the business 
man on the war job. He knew absolutely nothing 
about battleships, cruisers, torpedo-boat destroyers or 
shipbuilding, but he did know the rules of the business 



ENGLAND'S WAR EFFICIENCY ENGINEER 197 

game and how to get things done. He dedicated 
himself to hurrying up the shipbuilding programme 
and to the production of supplies and munitions for 
the navy. He became, as he aptly expressed it to 
me, " The Wet Minister of Munitions." As a side- 
line he joined the Shipping Control Committee. He 
was a man of many tasks — the Pooh-Bah of British 
Public Service. 

The Admiralty seethed with movement. Here as 
elsewhere throughout his progressive journey through 
the principal war posts in the gift of Britain, he ad- 
hered to the plan of taking his own people with him. 
This is a typical Geddes performance. The man 
trained in the Geddes school knows him and his 
methods. When he takes a new post they enable 
him to make it a going concern at once. 

He was not in the Admiralty very long before he 
installed the former Secretary and Solicitor of the 
North-Eastern Railway as Assistant Secretary. Other 
old colleagues followed. The civilian had at last in- 
vaded the stamping-ground ""of the sailor-man and 
was there to stay. Geddes gradually built up a group 
of officials, all of them graduated from the railways or 
business, and all dedicated to the task of making things 
happen. 

If you know Geddes at all you also know that he 
is not the type of man likely to remain in a subor- 
dinate place. He is just naturally booked for the top. 
When the dissatisfaction over what was considered to 
be a distinct inability to solve the submarine problem 
expanded into a vigorous national belief that Sir 
Edward Carson as First Lord of the Admiralty should 
do something or quit the job, no one was surprised 
when he got out and was succeeded by Sir Eric Geddes. 

The one-time section-hand on the Baltimore and 
Ohio Railroad was now in the office that made the 
supreme test of his resources. The public wanted 
action ; he was the man to give it to them. Before 
he was in office two weeks he knew what every ship 



igS THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

in the British Navy, from gasolene patrol-launch 
to thirty-thousand-ton super-dreadnought, was doing. 
As alwa^'-s, statistics were his weapon. He believes 
in them, because they are the infallible revealers of 
both weakness and strength. 

He proved the efficacy of his theory when he made 
his first important speech as First Lord of the Ad- 
miralty. He unloaded such a fusillade of facts that 
the loudest critical guns were silenced. To illustrate. 
There had been widespread chagrin over the sinking of 
a flotilla of neutral vessels from Scandinavia convoyed 
by two British destroyers. They were surprised and 
sunk in the North Sea by German raiders. The British 
people very naturally wondered why the Grand Fleet 
did not hear about this attack and rout the raiders. 

The First Lord asked the House to recollect these 
facts : that the area of the North Sea is 140,000 
square nautical miles, that Britain herself has a coast- 
hne of 568 nautical miles subject to attack by raiders, 
that the area of vision for a cruiser squadron with its 
attendant destroyers at night is well under five square 
miles. Then he added, " Five square miles in 
140,000." There was not a chirp about that North 
Sea action when he got through. 

When you meet Sir Eric Geddes you understand 
very soon why he is one of the Over-Lords of England 
at forty-two. Physically he looks the part. He is 
deep and broad of chest, wide of shoulder ; you can 
see the muscles of his arm expand under his sleeves. 
His jaw is hard and unyielding, his mouth is firm ; 
his whole being incarnates strength of body and 
determination. Despite all this bone and sinew he 
is as active as a cat. His eyes look straight through 
you. He keeps fit by riding every morning before 
breakfast. 

I once asked him what single rule had been of most 
service to him. Quick as a flash he snapped out : 

" The use of statistics. I statitize everything. 
Knowledge is power and statistics are the throttle 



ENGLAND'S WAR EFFICIENCY ENGINEER 199 

valve of every business. But don't let statistics 
master you. Use them. I'll show you what I mean." 

He was sitting at the desk of the First Lord of the 
Admiralty. He pushed a buzzer, and when a secretary 
appeared he said : 

" Get me the statistics." 

In a few moments three books, made like loose- 
leaf ledgers, were before him. One was brown, the 
other blue, while the third was black. He picked 
them up in succession, saying : 

" This brown book contains a catalogue of all the 
Admiralty stock ; that is, a list of every ton of stuff 
W2 own. This blue book is the register of the per- 
sonnel of the navy, with every man's record up to 
yesterday. This black book contains the account of 
all naval operations and movements since the war 
began. Together they form a complete library of 
every available statistic about the Admiralty. In 
short, I know what every man and every ship is doing, 
and just where they are." 

Geddes believes that running a war is just like 
running any business. " It is just like operating a 
factory," he said. The following remark made to Lloyd 
George when they first met emphasizes this attitude : 
" Employ the men in warfare on the job in which 
they excelled in peace. Then you will have no square 
pegs in round holes." 

The maxim by which he ruled his men in France is 
typical of their Chief. Summed up it was : " Temper 
justice with mercy and common sense. Use mercy, 
because your people are working under fire ; employ 
common sense, because you must not expect them to 
do the impossible.." 

The best tribute that I ever heard paid to Sir Eric 
Geddes came from a long-headed Scotsman who 
worked with him on the North-Eastern, who said, 
" Capable men always get on wdth Geddes. He 
attracts the best to him," 

Geddes is about the only man who ever turned 



2 00 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

Lloyd George down. One day when they were both 
in the Ministry of Munitions his Chief sent for him 
and demanded certain figures at once about shell 
output. 

" You cannot have them, because they are not 
ready," he said. 

" But I must have them," said the Minister. 

" There is no ' must ' with incomplete statistics," 
replied Geddes. 

it closed the incident, and Lloyd George had to 
wait. I cite this little incident to show that Geddes 
never goes off at half-cock. 

When I last talked with him I asked him to give 
me a message to the American people as I was sail- 
ing for New York the next day. For once the answer 
did not follow hot on the question. 

" Give me a little time," he said. 

That night I received from him at my hotel the 
following statement, written in his own hand : 

" My message to your great nation is : 

" Give up hoping that this can be a short war. 
Plan and provide for an ever-receding duration of at 
least two years more. 

"If we all do so, peace may one day surprise us. 
If we do not, there will be no Peace and no Freedom, 
but only a postponement, 

" There must be no postponement and no ' next 
time.' " 

In this message Geddes the man speaks out of the 
years of contact with crash and crisis. It reveals rare 
qualities of vision and statesmanship. Yet they were 
born of business. Analyse the late J. P. Morgan in 
the light of the Eric Geddes career and you reahze 
that he might have been another Bismarck or Disraeli 
had he gone into politics. 

Geddes is of the same type. 

THE END 



THE 

REBIRTH OF RUSSIA 

BY 

ISAAC F. MARCOSSON 

Illustrated. Crown 8uo, 3s. 6d. net 

This book is the first adequate narrative of the 
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JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD, VIGO STREET, W. 1 



THE 

WAR AFTER THE WAR 

BY 

ISAAC F. MARCOSSON 

Crown 8uo, 5s> net 

This timely and significant book is the first 
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JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD, VIGO STREET, W. I 



CHARLES FROHMAN: 

MANAGER AND MAN 
By SSAAC F. MARCOSSON 

AND 

DANIEL FROHMAN 

With an Appreciation by Sir J. M. Barrie, with 2 Portraits 
of Frohman and many other Portraits and Illustrations 

Demy 8vo, 12s. Sd net 

"A wonderful, engrossing, delightful book." — Referee. 

"An interesting volume of theatrical anecdote and 
history." — Westminster Gazette. 

" This notable biography is a revelation of a singularly 
lovable and interesting personality." — Daily News. 



IN THE WAKE OF THE WAR 

PARLIAMENT OR IMPERIAL GOVERNMENT? 

By HAROLD HODGE 

Crown 8uo, 5a. net 

"Mr. Harold Hodge has the imaginative insight, 
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Land and Water. 

" His suggestions may be read with profit." — Times. 

" This volume is a model of clear thinking and sugges- 
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JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD, VIGO STREET, W. 1 



WOMEN AND SOLDIERS 

By Mrs. ALEC=TWEEDIE 

Crown 8uo, 2s. 6c8- net 
Mrs. Tweedie touches on many controversial subjects, from 
love-making, war-marriages, war-babies, divorce, clothes, 
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and work. She interlards her wisdom with much humour. 

THE GLORY OF THE TRENCHES 

By CONINQSBY DAWSON 

Crown 8uo, 3s. 6d. net 

This new book by the author of " Khaki Courage," which 

had such an enormous success (100,000 copies sold in 

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the fighting men on. 

CONSTANTINE, KING AND TRAITOR 

By DEMETRA VAKA 

Author of "A Child o the Orient" 
Illustrated. Demy 8vo, 10s. 6d. net 
The story of the attempt of an American girl, a Greek by 
birth, to reconcile Venizelos and Ex-King Constantine and 
save Greece for the Allies. A thrilling first-hand account of 
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of the secret and epoch-making interview between the 
Kaiser and Ex-King Constantine, at which this war was 
discussed six months before it started. 

ROUMANIA YESTERDAY AND TO=DAY 

By Mrs. WILL GORDON, F.R.Q.S. 

With a Frontispiece by LOUIS RAEMAEKERS, and otiier Illustrations 
Demy 8uo, 10s. 6d. net 

Mrs. Will Gordon has written many books on travel, and 
this volume, dealing with a topical subject, should be of 
considerable interest. 

OUT TO WIN 

By CONINQSBY DAWSON 
Crown 8uo, 3s. 6d. net 
The entry of America into the War, and what the 
Americans are doing at home and in France. 

JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD, VIGO STREET, W. 1 



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